Part 81 (2/2)
He's right there, you idiot....
”I'm here,” she said quietly. ”You'll be fine, but you need to rest.”
”You . . . saved . . . me.”
”You saved me. You did a better job,” Anna said.
”The... Sea-Priest...”
”Lady Anna turned him into flame with her anger,” interjected Liende.
”Fhurgen...?”
Anna looked down at the stone floors she'd insisted be washed before moving Jecks into the house she'd borrowed-or commandeered.
”He was dead before Lady Anna could even begin a spell,” said Liende.
Anna wasn't sure that was so, but she'd only had the chance to save one of them, and she'd made a choice.
”He...good....man.”
”Just rest,” Anna urged.
Jecks' eyes closed slowly, almost unwillingly, and Anna stroked his forehead for a moment.
”Just rest,” she repeated softly before straightening, carefully, hoping that the double images and semi- migraine headache would fade before she reached Envaryl, hoping, as always, that she did the right thing- and fearing she wouldn't.
118.
ENVARYL, DUMAR Ehara paces across the room, at ten yards long and half that in width, large for the trading town. He goes, to the third-story window and peers out from between shutters bleached white by sun and lack of oil at the gently rolling hills, dotted with irregular shadows cast from the scattered summer clouds.
Beyond the low yellow-brick walls less than a hundred yards from the window, nothing moves in the meadows and empty fields. A handful of armsmen walk the walls. Several carry bows already strung.
Two lancers in the crimson of Dumar ride to the front of the building, the trader's mansion the Lord of Dumar has commandeered. Ebara straightens his tunic, brushes back his dark hair and waits.
At the single thrap on the door, he coughs, then answers. Come in.”
The stocky lancer officer enters and bows. ”The scouts have just returned, sire.”
Ehara waits.
”The sorceress's forces have pa.s.sed through Hasjyl. Lord Ehara” The lancer officer bows again. ”They ride toward the walls of Envaryl.”
”Does she ride with them?”
”They bear the banner with the crossed spears. They would not ride westward, save she were directing them.”
Ehara nods reluctantly. ”I had thought for a time, when the sorceress stopped short of Hasjyl, that the Sea- Priest had succeeded.”
”None have seen him. A shepherd from Hasjyl said that harmony and dissonance clashed six morns ago, and that the ground shook.” The lancer adds apologetically, ”That was all he could say, sire”
”More like dissonance and . dissonance,” mutters Ehara. He looks at the lancer. ”Thank you. Would you have Captain Fional join me?”
”Yes, sire.”
Even before the door is fully closed, the dark-bearded Lord of Dumar returns to the window, gazing eastward.
”Who would have thought it? One sorceress, and all of Liedwahr turned upside-down. A harmless ploy to gain territory in Defalk, and she invades Dumar. A mere attempt to kill her, and she pursues me like a harpy of dissonance. I have nowhere to turn, nowhere to go-nor does my son and heir. If I confront her directly, I will be turned to flames or spitted with arrows like a stag. If I die on the field against her, I honor her, and that I will not do... not now. For that, for that she must wait.” He shakes his head. 'So little I have left. So little that I must content myself with making a sorceress wait. So little.... She does not understand Liedwahr, and we all will suffer.” Ehara laughs, a sound bitter and booming simultaneously, a roaring that fills the room for but a moment ”I will suffer most of all.”
119 Anna reined up on the low hillside to the southeast of the yellow-brick wails of Envaryl, walls that still lay more than a dek westward. In the seven days it had taken her to recover from the after effects of the Darksong used to save Jecks and to move her forces to within ten deks of Envaryl, Ehara had kept all his troops inside those yellow-brick walls.
As Farinelli tossed his head gently, Anna's hand dropped to the open-topped s.h.i.+eld carrier and the re- spelled round s.h.i.+eld that had saved her life twice so far-and had failed to save Fhurgen or to protect Jecks.
She couldn't even make a gesture for Fhurgen, not even with cold gold. The black-bearded guard had never told anyone where he had come from, not even the most seasoned veterans from the volunteers who had followed Hanfor from the Prophet's service to Anna's. What had be fled from? And from where? She shook her head.
Alvar reined up on her right, Hanfor on her left. Rickel and Lejun eased their mounts forward of Anna, the protective s.h.i.+elds up and ready. To her right, south of the rise, the river road wound along the Envar River for close to half a dek before turning more northward toward the main gates-those on the south wall. The heavy wooden gates were closed, and the crimson banner of Ehara flew from the right-hand gate tower.
From what Anna had found from her previous work with the scrying gla.s.s, Envaryl was enclosed by a pentagon of yellow-brick walls, each side roughly a dek in length. The town was one of the few walled ones in Dumar, possibly because it was an old town, and the western entrance to Dumar from both Mansuur and Neserea.
To the north, Anna could barely make out a dark line just above the horizon, the nearest mountains, those where the Mittfels and the Westfels joined to separate Dumar from Neserea.
In the early-morning light, the sorceress could see the length of both the south and the eastern walls, and the watchtowers on three of the five corners, but not any individual figures in the towers or along the walls.
”Quiet for now,” observed Alvar. ”It was not so yesterday. Watch for a moment.”
Anna watched. So did Hanfor, and so, Anna presumed, did the twoscore armsmen behind them.
Shadows from the summer clouds cast slow-moving shadows across the hills, across the empty fields, and the summer gra.s.ses that barely bent in the light breeze. Although the air remained damp, Anna appreciated the warm breeze, a relief after so many days of hot and sticky travel.
A movement caught her eye, and she glanced north where two figures sprinted from somewhere behind the corner watchtower away from Envaryl and in the general direction of the distant Mittfels.
”Yesterday was worse,” Alvar said from her right. ”Jirsit's scouts counted scores of them running away.
The armsmen just watched, those that hadn't thrown rags over their uniforms and joined them.”
”Ehara's armsmen shoot deserters,” Hanfor pointed out ”Jirsit's scouts saw that as well.”
”When, they see them, ser,” answered Alvar. 'Or when they are forced to use their bows... or crossbows.”
Anna gained the definite impression that Alvar disliked crossbows. She wondered what he would have thought of machine guns. ”We could wait a day or two, or a week,” she suggested, ”until Ehara had no armsmen left. Or fewer armsmen.”
”Lady Anna,” Hanfor said slowly from her left, ”I seldom question your thoughts...”
”But you do this time,” Anna said. ”What have I missed?”
Hanfor s.h.i.+fted uneasily in his saddle, turning to face the regent. Ehara knows he cannot best your sorceries, or even your forces, now. He will wait, because that will make you seem weak and because he knows that you do not wish to use your power against the innocent. So he huddles among the poor folk of Envaryl. If you wish to end this war quickly, you must destroy Envaryl, or you needs must visit and spell- seek each and every hamlet and town in all of Dumar.”
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