Part 11 (1/2)

Darham spoke: ”My brother-”

Cvinthil whirled on him. ”Do not call me your brother, Corrinian, until you begin to act like one.”

Darham dropped his eyes. He turned away from Cvinthil. Calrach cantered up and halted before his king. ”My lord?”

Pa.s.sing a hand over his face, Darham deliberated. Cvinthil waited. At last the king of Corrin said: ”Prepare for attack, Calrach. But be cautious. I suspect that there are adders among our corn.”

”The Vayllens are indeed devious,” said Cvinthil.

”Perhaps,” said Darham bitterly. ”But our crops do not lie in Vaylle.”

A short distance ahead, the road rose and pa.s.sed through a range of low, rolling hills, then once more descended to the coastal plain. On the far side of the hills was a village that should have been taken first, but time did not allow for that; so Cvinthil sent his troops into the hills, there to lie hidden until the Vayllens could be surrounded, and Darham's phalanxes moved into position for a simultaneous a.s.sault on the village.

By the time the Vayllens came into sight at the crest of the low pa.s.s, there was not a trace of the Gryylthan and Corrinian forces. Even the baggage and supply wagons had been hidden. Sword in hand, Cvinthil waited behind the lip of a ditch with Darham, but doubts were still nagging at him, doubts that were increased by Darham's silent but obvious opposition. ”You do not believe that they are our enemies, do you?” he said in an undertone. . ”I would find another way than this.”

The very words of Alouzon to Dythragor, once upon a time. Cvinthil was shaken, and he tried to sh.o.r.e up his crumbling convictions with his memories of what Vaylle had left of Bandon. To be sure, he had no great love for the town that had attacked him when he was in the company of the Dragonmaster, but the weapons that had been used against it were strange, inhuman: the mark of a people who were ruthless enough to slaughter sleeping men and women without remorse.

But was this not Cvinthil, king of Gryylth, who had carefully hidden his wartroops so as to better fall without warning upon an unwitting party of Vayllens? So as to better slaughter them without a fight? Was this what Vorya would have done? And what about Marrget?

He clenched his hand on his sword. Marrget was dead. They were all dead. Helwych had said so. Helwych had . . .

He looked at Darham. The Corrinian was waiting patiently. In the distance, his phalanxes were lying ready.

The Vayllens crested the pa.s.s and began to descend. There were no more than fifty of them, and they were traveling in a tight group as though in fear of an attack. Well, Cvinthil thought as the last Vayllen crossed into the killing zone, their caution would not save them.

The hills grew tense with imminent attack, and as though suddenly aware of the slaughter that was about to fall upon them, the Vayllens stopped. The white- haired man at the head of the party looked behind him. He called out, but his words were too faint to hear.

Cvinthil shouted for the charge.

The hills sprang alive with men and women. Swords slid out of scabbards with a shrill ring. Pikes rattled against one another. Shouts echoed Cvinthil's command. Within seconds, the wartroops were advancing on the Vayllens.

The old man looked up. He saw the men and women and weapons. His face turned sad.

But before the charge reached the Vayllens, before spears could be launched or warhorses could grind the apparently unarmed men and women beneath their hooves, a stirring went through the Vayllen party. From among the rich robes, gold jewelry, harps, and staves, a woman appeared. She looked worn and weary, and the braid in her ash-blond hair was dirty and frayed with days of inattention. But in her hand was a sword, she wore the leather armor of a Gryylthan warrior, and she carried herself as proudly as a queen.

Cvinthil was on his feet. He was running. He was screaming: * 'For the love of the G.o.ds, stay your weapons! That is Marrget of Crownhark!''

* CHAPTER 9 *

Relys drifted in a foggy haze of pain and violation. She had long ago lost any cognizance of day or night, was, in fact, no longer sure where she was, or even at times who. Such matters had been rendered meaningless by the utter reality of her circ.u.mstances: the hard pallet beneath her naked body, the faces-young faces of young men-bobbing above her with the rhythmic thrust of violent penetration and climax, the white hot pain of ma.s.s rape.

Afloat in a universe of b.l.o.o.d.y thighs and an inner pain that rose like a river in flood to engulf everything of what she had been, she gazed almost sightlessly at the ceiling above her, at the faces, at the floating phosphenes that swirled in her vision as she clenched her eyes with repeated torment; but she clung to the words that Kallye had spoken: A woman's power lies in change, and in patience, and in endurance.

Endurance.

Change had been forced upon her, patience was a thing unthought-of, but, fists clenched, jaw clamped shut against her screams, she endured. Her abdomen bucked and burned with each new entry, but she endured. Hours pa.s.sed. Days pa.s.sed, but she endured.

A woman's strength. Helwych had told the Guard in jest and irony to teach her what it meant to be a woman; and, in a way, Relys had indeed learned that. Entered, entered again, her v.u.l.v.a bleeding and raw as a fresh wound, she held to the midwife's words, held herself, held the tattered shreds of her mind and consciousness-and she gathered them all up and retreated at last to what small region of comparative oblivion lay deep within her, beyond the reach of the faces, the rapes, and the mocking laughter.

Thunder, suddenly.

She opened her eyes. The room was dark. Her wrists were still chained to the top of the pallet, and the thin mattress beneath her was soaked with s.e.m.e.n and blood and sweat; but she was alone, and she could hear, faintly, the sound of rain pattering on thatch, splas.h.i.+ng on bare ground, running off roofs and eaves.

Endurance.

She forced herself to feel, to listen, to see. She forced herself to become aware of her body once more. She had been violated, invaded, forced repeatedly; but she was a woman: she would endure. Her pride had been battered and crushed, her very ident.i.ty shredded; but she was a warrior: she would fight.

The rain poured down on the thatch, drumming now softly, now fiercely. Lightning flashed, and she saw that the barracks was indeed empty. Her tormentors were, for the time, gone.

Why? The question rose automatically, the product of a lifetime of command and soldiery, but her body, with a deeper wisdom, raised its own: How long?

For a minute she struggled with herself, for despair was an open pit at her feet, one that beckoned invitingly and pointed the way into madness and oblivion. But her pride jerked her back like a strong arm, and Kallye's wisdom had become a litany of hope for her. Endurance.

She had nothing to lose by trying. Continued rape would be no more than a simple prolongation of what had gone before, and death would be a welcome release. Her thighs and belly were on fire with pain, her legs so bruised and strained that movement was an agony, but wincing, stifling her groans, she drew her knees up, set her feet against the filthy pallet, and pushed herself up until there was slack in the chains that bound her hands.

By the light of the low-burning fire in the corner hearth, she examined the fetters. Designed to shackle a man, they had been bent rudely inward so as to grip a woman's narrower wrists, but the one fastened at the base of her left hand was loose.

Painfully, gasping through clenched teeth, she pulled against it. The iron ring slid part way along her hand and stopped, but her flesh was slick with the rank sweat of pain and fear, and once she consciously relaxed, she managed to slide it completely off.

Trembling, she felt her face as though to rea.s.sure herself that, in spite of the horror and the degradation, she was still herself. Her fingers examined the features of a woman, slid down over a small, finely boned chin, touched a slender throat that, inside, was raw with suppressed shrieks.

She wanted to weep. She wanted to cry out. She did neither. Although within her was an edge of fear that surpa.s.sed even the sharp brilliance of the lightning outside, it vied against the calm skills of an embattled warrior and her newfound knowledge of a woman's strength, and as Relys examined the shackle on her right wrist, she felt a calmness returning.

But this iron had been bent more tightly against her flesh, and her hand would slide only a little way through before it caught.

Ears straining for the sound of returning guards, she dragged herself up and examined the band more closely. It had been pounded shut-no key on earth would free her-and she had neither hammer nor file. There seemed to be no way out: she would remain here, bound to the bed of her violation, until the men of the Guard returned and resumed their sport.

No. The thought hammered at her. No.

She looked up at the door. It was shut. There might be men waiting on the other side, but once again she had nothing to lose.

With an endurance born of the unendurable and a patience chipped out of walls of despair, she slid the fetter back, set her teeth to the base of her little finger, and began to gnaw.

Yyvas of Burnwood came as Senon of Bandon had come: exhausted, wounded, his body charred by what only Helwych knew to call napalm. When he staggered up the road to Kingsbury Hill the gate guards, frightened by his appearance, rushed him directly to the Hall, and the quick rumor of his coming and his wounds brought the other men from their barracks, their pleasures, and their duties to fill Hall Kingsbury and hear what he had to say.

Parts of his flesh had literally melted and fused under the deluge of liquid fire that had enveloped him, and Helwych was reminded strongly of Tireas's description of the man-Flebas was it?-who had accidentally touched the Tree. But his tale was even more alarming than his appearance.

”They came ... out of the sky,” he gasped. ”Roaring and shrieking. And there were cracks and roars . . . like ...”

Thunder shuddered along the roofs of Kingsbury. The rain poured down. Yyvas cowered. Several of his wounds still smoked in spite of the drenching he had received: the emblem of white phosphorus.

”Like that. . .”he managed. ”And then there were hounds . . . like a flood ...”

Helwych started. Hounds? He controlled the hounds, and he had been keeping them away from the towns. By what improbable autonomy had they-?

He felt cold, and he did not have to remind himself to waver with illusory wounds as he s.h.i.+fted in his chair. ”These . . . things from the sky,” he said slowly. ”Did you see them?”

”Lights only, master.”

Dryyim prodded Yyvas. ”The t.i.tle, hayseed, is lord.”