The Lioness

Chapter Twenty-Two

Kerian counted her dead. She counted them by reckoning those who did not make it out, who fell in the forest to Knights, to the trampling hoofs of war horses, to swords, to maces, to Thagol’s evil. She counted them in tears and wasn’t ashamed of that. She wept, Jeratt did, and Feather’s Flight did not, for she was among the dead. She lay among the farmers, the villagers, beside Ander the miller’s son who had refused to hand her over to Thagol’s Knights. He’d been in love with her, so said Jeratt.

“When I close my eyes, I see it on him still, Jeratt. The look on him, dying for me.” The flash of madness, of glory as he flung himself between her and the killing steel.

They sat on a high, boulder-topped hill of the kind she first saw an age ago, in another autumn, as she climbed endlessly behind Stanach to avoid Knights on the road to the Hare and Hound. Stubborn, that day she’d climbed in ill-chosen boots until her feet bled. She thought, now, that her heart bled. When she looked down the hill, Kerian saw the dwarf coming up. He’d fought well—for a one-handed man, Jeratt had said.

“What are you going to do about the dwarf, Kerian?”

Kerian shrugged. “What’s to do? He’s here, and I can’t get him safely to Qualinost. He should have stayed behind. Damn, maybe he should have stayed in Thorbardin.”

Kerian watched Stanach labor up the hill, weary as she, sweat running on him, a filthy bandage wrapped around his head.

“Are you all right?” she asked when he came close.

He looked up at her in moonlight, his eyes fierce as a blade’s edge. He said, “No, I’m bleeding. I’m hungry. I am in this gods damned forest, Mistress Lioness. I am not all right.” He looked around, behind, to the sides. “I don’t think any of us are.”

She frowned. Jeratt lifted his head.

“There’s something in the forest,” the dwarf said.

Jeratt rose, his hand on his sword.

“No.” Stanach dropped to a seat beside Kerian, his breathing a weary groaning. Kerian touched his shoulder lightly. He shook his head. “I’m all right. By Reorx’s beard, though, I am tired.

“In the forest,” he said, returning to what he’d started to say. “Not Knights. Not the rest of our folk straggling back or away. Something else. Something sly and quiet.”

Kerian nodded to Jeratt, who went off down the hill to gather a few of those still standing. They went out into the forest, cat-footed. A young woman ran up the hill—where did she get the strength?—to whisper in Kerian’s ear.

“Yes, and quickly. Keep an eye out for friends.”

Down she went, bounding, and in moments, one by one, guards took stands around the hill, setting a perimeter. Stanach put his arms on his drawn-up knees, his head on his forearms. He did not take four breaths before Kerian heard him gently snoring. She sat alone beside the sleeping emissary from Thorbardin, a dwarf far from home. When he wavered, she helped him lie down. He hardly woke, never missed a breath. Neither did he stir when Jeratt came back to say he’d found nothing and no one in the forest.

“I don’t know what the dwarf heard, but we didn’t see sign of anything. Just his imagination?”

Kerian glanced at Stanach, sleeping, then back. “Doesn’t usually have a very active imagination, does he?”

Jeratt agreed that he didn’t “What dwarf does? There’s nothing there, Kerian. Just the night, the forest and our doom, eh?”

Just those things. Jeratt sat down. He’d found a good stream and offered her his leather water bottle, fat and dripping. “That’s supper, I’m afraid, and I’m thinking breakfast won’t be much better.”

After a time, he went away to watch at the edge of the camp, and Kerian saw him walking among the warriors, bending low to speak to one, slapping the shoulder of another. In the morning they would break their fast on a bitter bread. In the morning, Thagol would come through the forest with steel.

She sat a long time thinking, gazing into the forest. After a time, she saw a fire spring up, then another. The blood in her veins was cold, and her heart weighed like stone as one after another fires of Thagol’s encampments glowed, out in the distance, out between the trees. One and one and one... they made a circle, wide and strong.

“They ring us in,” she said to the night.

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again her heart stood suddenly still. Upon the forest night, the trees, the darkness, the little bits of light from campfires, something moved between her camp and that of the Knights. Hair rose up prickling on her arms, the back of her neck. Kerian’s breath caught, and she let it go silently. Whatever it was drifted, then stopped, then drifted again. It moved like smoke, like shadow, and as Kerian watched, trying to make out shape and substance, the thing vanished.

Beside her, Stanach stirred. He groaned, cursed, and shoved himself up to sitting. He saw the water and drank deeply. He offered her some, and she drank more.

Kerian pointed to the lights, the real gleams of real fires. Stanach sighed.

“I tell you, Mistress Lioness, I don’t like being away from Thorbardin. It’s never good. I’m meant to be there, I’m supposed to be there. All this…” He swept his arm wide, taking in the sleeping elves, the distant Knights and draconians. “All this, damn, I don’t even know why I’m here anymore—where I am or what I’m fighting for.”

“You’re north of Reanlea Gorge, not far from Lighting—”

“—Thunder.”

“Lightning and Thunder. You aren’t even all that far from Thorbardin. Closer than you’d be if you were sleeping in a bed of goose down in the best chamber King Gilthas could offer.”

A small breeze wandered around the top of the hill, smelling like earth and stone, like the water in the rill below. “Ah, your king. And you, his own, dear outlaw.”

She looked at him sideways. He did not smile, but he slid her a look of knowing.

“His own, dear outlaw, that’s you. What are you going to do in the morning, Mistress Lioness?”

“Fight.”

He shook his head. “You won’t make it through. The Skull Knight is set up to crush you.”

“Us,” she murmured, her eyes on the fires.

He grunted. “You’ll die.”

“We probably will.”

The first howling of wolves wound through the night. One to another, they called out, Brother! Where are you? Brother! There is food! Brother!

Kerian winced, thinking of the corpses to be stripped, the bodies of friends who could not be decently buried.

Softly Stanach said, “How will we die, Mistress Lioness?”

Kerian drew a breath, a long one, and on it she felt again the quiver of tears she’d shed for a boy who had flung himself between Thagol’s sword and her breast.

“We will die well. If anyone knows about it, if anyone of us gets out of here to tell, they will be singing the song of us in every tavern in Qualinesti and all the best bars in Thorbardin.”

“Our kings would be proud.”

Now tears did prick behind her eyes. “Yes, they would be proud.”

They stood a moment longer, silent and watching the wood. Once, Stanach peered a little closer into the darkness. Kerian followed his line of sight and thought she saw a darker darkness moving. She glanced at the dwarf, he at her. They looked again and saw only fires winking, out there in the darkness, like bloodshot stars. Wolves howled, and Stanach said they’d better get some more sleep.

“Goodnight, missy,” he said, his voice low and fond.

Kerian, however, did not sleep. She sat long awake, watching the fires of her foe, watching over her warriors.

Now and then she saw flitting shadows in the woods, swift out of the corner of her eye and gone. No more than that and certainly nothing of the odd shape she’d seen earlier.

The risen sun set the morning haze afire, gilding the tops of the trees, staining the stones with ghostly blood-paint. In the sky, crows hung. Ravens burdened the trees, and Kerian stood upon the hill, high on the top of the lichened boulder. Below, her warriors made ready. They had slept cold, not lighting fires. Now they sat improving their weapons, honing bright edges, attending to bow strings, to fletching.

“Do we wait?” Jeratt asked, his eye on the distance, his mind already in the field.

Kerian didn’t think there was anything else to do. “Get them all to high ground,” she said, with one gesture sweeping the hollow below. “If Thagol’s going to get us, he’s going to work for it.”

Jeratt whistled. Every head turned, faces lifted. He gestured, and Kerian counted them, coming. There weren’t more than a hundred of them, with weakened weapons. Some had stolen swords, lifted from corpses. Out in the forest, there had to be half as many draconians and twice as many Knights. She gathered her warriors around her.

“Find cover wherever you can, make them find you. We don’t rush; we don’t attack. We hold this hill until we’ve killed all we can.”

Until they have killed us.

Beside her, Stanach made his axe sing to a whetstone. Little sparks flew up from the blade. It amazed her he still had it. The weapon was made to fly, to kill at a distance. It was easily the first weapon lost in any battle.

“Are you fond of it?” she asked, her eyes on the forest, watching for her foe.

“The axe. Pretty much. I made it.”

She turned, surprised. “You?”

From lowering brows, he looked at her. He held up his hand, the one with the broken fingers. He turned the hand over, as though to study it. “Surprising, isn’t it? Fight pretty good for a one-handed man. Imagine what I could do with two.”

The color mounted to her cheeks as she watched him study his hand. He didn’t move those fingers, he couldn’t, but sight of them reminded her of the sign above his tavern door, a broken hammer on an anvil’s breast Stanach’s Curse.

“Look,” said the dwarf, with his axe pointing down to the forest. “Time has come, Mistress Lioness.”

Time had come. The Knights came through the forest on foot, their steeds abandoned. They did not come clanking in armor. They came lightly, in mail and some wearing breastplates. They came behind a vanguard of draconians, the lizard-men their shield and decisive weapon all at once. The wind came from behind, carrying the reptile stench of them, the reek of their foul breath.

“Archers,” Kerian said, surprised by the coolness of her voice. “Draconians first. Go after them the way they used to go after dragons in the days before dragonlances—aim for the eyes, send your shaft right through to their tiny brains and drop them where they stand. Let the Knights wade through the poison.”

Jeratt laughed, liking the picture of that.

“We never leave this hill,” Kerian said. “We make them come up.”

Closer, the draconians slashed through the underbrush, and now Kerian heard their voices, growling curses in a language whose every word seemed like a curse. She put a hand on Jeratt’s arm. She knew this was the moment to steady him or he’d leap too soon.

“Easy,” she said. “Let them see us. Let them come to us.”

He quivered under her hand, but he held. Because he did, the rest did. Arrows whispered from quivers. By the handful each archer took them, one to nock to the bowstring, four to hold between clenched teeth.

“Not till you see the first of them among the ashes of our fires,” Kerian warned.

Below the crest, on either side, men and women with swords and war-axes stood ready to fall upon whatever enemy made it up the hill.

“Soft,” Kerian said, “now patient, patient.”

The first draconian stepped into the empty campsite, stopped and looked around. His fellows came after, and they slowed, then stopped, looking around for prey.

Stanach stood and tucked his whetstone into the little pouch at his belt. Jeratt took a careful breath around the shafts of his arrows. He lifted his bow. Every archer had an eye on Kerian, and every one of them saw her lift her hand, drew breath as she did, and let fly when she dropped her fist.

The arrow-storm whistled down the hill, shrieking in the morning silence. One draconian fell, and another. A third, and one after that. Four in the first volley! It was not enough. Came the second volley, and two more fell. One stumbled into the decomposing corpse of his fellow and died screaming. Three fell wounded, and it needed another volley to kill those.

Kerian shouted, “Archers!” and the fourth volley flew.

Beyond the hissing, reeking corpses of draconians, the Knights stopped. Some stumbled into the acid, others pulled away in time, and those saw their prey atop the hill.

“Go!” shouted Thagol, pointing. “Charge them!”

The Skull Knight drove them hard, howled at them, cursed them, and sent them around the deadly draconian corpses. They split and regrouped to come up the hill from the sides.

Heart hammering, her sword in her right hand, the dwarf-made knife in her left, Kerian looked at Jeratt, looked at Stanach.

“Now,” she said, as the first of Thagol’s men came up the hill. “For the song!”

For the song, she cried, and even as she did, her battle cry changed to a baffled shout as the line of Knights wavered at the sides and in the rear. From the crest, she saw them falter and fall out, one after another staggering from the line. Some cried out, others fell in silence, as death came suddenly.

“Look!” Jeratt shouted. “What is that?”

He pointed. Something moved like a shadow behind the Knights, dark and swift and silent.

“By the gods,” Jeratt whispered. “It’s him.”

Kerian’s heart lifted. “It’s Dar,” she said, for she recognized the tactic, the swift charge with filled bows and the equally swift retreat. The foray out from shadows with cudgel to smash a skull, with sword to gut a foe, then slipping away. The newcomers flashed in and out of shadows, striking swiftly, sometimes in silence so that they seemed like ghosts, sometimes howling to chill the blood of their enemies.

“Look!” Stanach cried, even as the confused Knights turned in on themselves, back to the ground they’d tried to flee. The dwarf laughed. “They’re being herded like cattle!”

As they watched, the Kagonesti shifted ground, surrounding the Knights, and indeed, herding them. Hurt, confused, their numbers falling away before their eyes, the Knights tried to break out, tried to find their lord or hear his commands. Kerian didn’t doubt the Lord Knight shouted or tried to direct his men, but no one could hear him above the blood-chilling war cries of Dar and his warriors. A little at a time, though they fought hard and sometimes bravely, the Knights were driven toward the bottom of the hill, forced to mass—in many instances weaponless—to the place Kerian defended.

“Will we just stand here?” Jeratt said.

Kerian flashed him a bright and sudden grin. “I don’t think we’d better or we’ll be overrun by fleeing Knights.”

Shouting, Jeratt waved their warriors down. Behind Kerian the archers filled their bows again.

The Knights, beset from behind, driven from the sides, heard at last the voice of their lord. Thagol’s command ripped through the melee, rallying his men until they formed three forces, one at point, two flanking. One of the flanks turned into the forest eastward, the other westward. The point of the spear, the draconians and the Knights, no longer driven, charged the hill again.

In the wood the air filled with war cries and death-screams as the Kagonesti and the Knights came together. Kerian saw them, the Wilder Elves outflanked, the Knights and draconians rampaging among them, savaging Dar’s band from two sides.

“Go!” she shouted to her warriors. “To the Kagonesti! Go!”

First down the hill was Jeratt, eyes alight, face shining with a warrior’s half-mad laughter. He ran to help an old comrade, the friend who had never forgotten him, and whooped a high and joyous battle cry.

Before her eyes, Jeratt staggered. He stumbled, turned, upon his face the same expression she’d seen on Ander—the utter shock of the dying. He fell, his hands clutching his chest, blood spilling out over his fingers, out around the steel of a Knight’s flung dagger.

Kerian shouted, “No!” and bellowed orders to her warriors to fight on. Someone yelled, “For Jeratt!”

For Ander! For Felan!

For Qualinesti!

They went, and as they did the two flanks of Knights and draconians turned again, wheeling to meet the charge. Outnumbered, still Kerian’s warriors fought, for it was Jeratt at their head, Jeratt, somehow still stumbling forward, unwilling to turn from embattled friends until death stole his last breath. From the hill, commanding her archers, Kerian saw the Wilder Elves and her own warriors falling before the draconians and the Knights like hay before the scythe.

Furious, Kerian turned to the archers. Every one of them stood drained of color, the blood run out of their faces, leaving the flesh ashen. Stanach, halfway down the hill, stood like stone, while blood and battle lapped up the hill. Eyes on the forest where Kerian’s warriors had gone to fight for the Wilder Elves, he shouted:

“There! By Reorx! There!”

The forest trembled. The trees shook. Darkness came, and darkness went as though the wood itself possessed eyes to blink. Shadow and light ran together, not in dappling but in a great whirling force as though they rushed to each other like live beings, long parted and longing for one another’s embrace.

Screams arose from all around, and these were not the shrieks of the dying. These were screams of terror, cries in elven voices and human voices. Somewhere, draconians raged, but their voices sounded small.

The ground heaved, and the trees danced. They lifted root, raised branches like revelers. The earth gaped wide, in places swallowing combatants. Not one of the fallen was an elf, Qualinesti or Wilder, however. Kerian drew breath to call back her warriors and let the breath go. A great howling filled the world, as though from the throat of the earth itself.

It rose from ground, from stone, a beast with arms like enormous trees, legs like hewn stone. Stanach cursed and prayed. Beside him, Kerian felt as though she were falling, falling into a vortex. She had seen this in Elder’s fires! Listening to the whisper of the ancient’s magic, she had listened to the distant thoughts of Elementals. This beast she had dreamed in smoke and firelight, with a woman so old no one knew her name. It rose before her now, a misshapen thing, with a head like hills, eyes like forest fire, and hands like slabs of stone. A creature made of the elements of air and earth walking among them.

A voice like thunder’s clap roared.

The first to fall before the thing were the creatures no nature had ever envisioned, the draconians bred of sorcery and the eggs of dragons. They died under the massive feet of the beast. They died of the fire of its eyes. Their poison became as mist and vanished. Upon the forest air ran rage, a fury like fire. Before that the Knights cowered. Some fell dead of hearts burst in terror. Others fled, and those who did not died on the swords of their enemies or the swords of their battle companions, enraged by cowardice. One who did not run, one who beat his own men with the flat of his sword, who cursed them screaming, was the Knight Kerian most longed to see.

Sword in hand, she ran down the hill, into the violence of the forest and the killing. Eamutt Thagol, his back to her, felt her coming.

Roaring, Thagol turned. His eyes took and held her. In her mind, she heard him, like a wolf howling, she heard him, and she felt him as she had in nightmare, hunting her. She lifted her sword high in the killing arc. As though a hand gripped her wrist, she halted. As though commanded, she stayed, and she could not take her eyes from his, could not look away. While all around her the earth rioted at the will of a shadowy beast born of Elemental magic, she stood arrested, frozen in the grip of the Skull Knight’s mind.

In her brain, she felt a roaring, like storm, like thunder. Behind her eyes, she saw the bright flash of his sword, like lightning. She felt something, a pull, a tug toward him, like a cold hand on her heart. He wanted to taste something, to taste her dying.

Blinded by the light of his sword, deafened by his voice in her mind, she cried out. She wrenched away and lost her balance. Stumbling, she fell, and he was upon her, the weight of him bearing her all the way to the ground. She thrashed beneath him, his mail biting into the flesh of her neck, his elbows pinning her at the shoulders. His breath on her face was icy, a dead man’s breath.

Kerian fought, thrashing harder. She got a knee up, got a foot on the ground. Weaponless, her sword flung far from her, she snarled and lunged at him, biting his face, his cheek. She tore flesh and pushed up hard. He lifted, and she brought up her knee to advantage. Howling, he cursed her, falling away, doubling over as she grabbed his own sword.

All the forest stood still, as though even the beast made of Elemental fury held its breath.

Kerian played the headsman’s part. Hard she lifted and hard she let fall her sword. Even then, his voice was howling in her head, like a wolf’s. When he died, his head fallen from his shoulders, even then she heard him.

Though all the forest had fallen still, the howling didn’t stop in Kerian’s head. It never stopped, until she’d finished counting her dead, until she found one over whom she must howl herself.

On the killing ground, the forest floor running with blood, Kerian found her brother, Iydahar, for whom she had come out of Qualinost, a long, long time ago last year. He was dead of an axe, the blade sunk keep in his chest, the haft running with his blood.

She said, “Dar,” as though he could answer. Wind off the battleground ruffled his hair. She touched his cheek and felt sweat cooling on his lifeless skin. She traced the planes of his face, a face known to her all her life, the face of a man she had hardly known.

Again, she said, “Dar…”

Beside him knelt his wife, Ayensha, with her arms wrapped round herself. She did not keen or make any sound until she looked up and saw Kerian.

“Is he dead?” she said. “Thagol?”

“He is dead.”

Ayensha nodded, then bent low to put her cheek upon her husband’s chest. “He didn’t want to come. I begged him. Elder begged him.”

Kerian looked up, the stilling breeze cool on her cheeks. “Elder.”

“You saw her.”

“Her…”

“The shape of her magic, the shape of her rage.”

She’d spoken with Elementals, the ancient woman whose magic could make the forest a confusion for her enemies.

“Dar came,” said Ayensha, “because of Elder, because I had promised and pledged to you and your cause. You killed my rapist and saved me from worse. You tried to drive the alien Knights from an elf kingdom. We told him—I told him—you were owed that much.”

In her eyes shone the terrible light of one who had paid far more than she thought she owed. Together they sat in silence, each beside the man they had loved, brother and husband. For a long while no one came to disturb them, the two women in the wreckage of the forest, one in the ruin of her life.