Crown of Vengeance dpt-1 Read online

  He had done neither. Vieliessar’s army had crossed Laeldor unopposed.

  As they went, the commonfolk of Laeldor flocked to her, hailing her as High King and swearing she was their lord. Gunedwaen questioned them, asking what they had seen of the movement of knights and supplies—for however Ablenariel meant to answer her, he would have needed to call up his levy knights—but always the answer was the same: Nothing. We have seen nothing.

  “It is not possible,” Gunedwaen said in frustration. “You’ve had Landbond and Farmholders here from every steading within a hundred miles of our line of march. Landbond see everything—and not one of them has seen knights heading to muster. I’d say Ambrant Lightbrother just didn’t deliver your message, except—”

  “Except that pompous windbag would never miss the chance to lecture a War Prince while doing his duty,” Thoromarth growled.

  Vieliessar and her senior commanders sat at table in her pavilion. They had reached the keep itself and had set camp perhaps two miles from its walls. No one knew whether or not they would fight in the morning, but Vieliessar had ordered the feasts and victory sacrifices made just as if they would.

  “Say the message wasn’t delivered,” Rithdeliel said. “Say, oh, his horse threw him and he broke his neck on the way to the keep. Or was eaten by wolves. By now someone would have mentioned our presence to Ablenariel, and he would’ve sent one of his Lightborn to demand we go home.”

  “So he’s just pretending he hasn’t seen us,” Nadalforo said contemptuously. The former mercenary reached out with her dagger to skewer a chunk of meat from the platter in the middle of the table. “Fine for him. But do you think he had time to tell all his nobles his plan before we got here? We’ve been tromping over manorial lands for the last five days, and the only notice anyone takes of us is to come and try to join the army.”

  Princess Nothrediel laughed, then quickly covered her mouth with her hand. “Well, it’s true, Father,” she said in answer to Thoromarth’s dark look. “It doesn’t make any sense! Laeldor can call—” She paused for a moment in thought. “—two score grand-tailles, just as we can. Although really closer to twelve, if you mean knights who can actually fight. They won’t all fit in the castel. And it’s at least a moonturn and a half before Caerthalien goes to meet Ullilion, so they are all still here.”

  “And even if Caerthalien has demanded Laeldor’s support before time—it is possible, now that the Heir-Prince has lost so many of his father’s knights—someone would have seen the companies on the move,” Gunedwaen said.

  Rithdeliel shook his head, but in bafflement, not disagreement. “Either Ablenariel knows we’ve challenged him, or he doesn’t. Either he has summoned his levy knights, or he hasn’t. All we know for certain is we haven’t seen them, and nobody else has, either.”

  “You are too pessimistic, Lord Rithdeliel,” Vieliessar said, with grave humor. “We also know where Lord Ablenariel’s Great Keep is.”

  Princess Nothrediel and Commander Nadalforo both laughed.

  * * *

  The day of the battle—if there was going to be one—dawned clear and cool. The army had taken its final orders from its captains the night before, and in the dim light before dawn its warriors moved into position around the keep. The craftworkers’ village was empty when the army reached it, and so were the stables. The craftworkers would have fled to the keep for safety at the army’s approach, but the absence of the horses implied a mounted force waiting to strike.

  The only problem with that is none of my scouts have seen any indication of such a force, Vieliessar thought in irritation. There were surprises awaiting her today, and she hated that thought. She had done all she could against it: Nadalforo and her First Sword, Faranglis, commanded between them four grand-tailles, all former mercenaries. They did not stand with the main force, but instead rode in a wide circle around it, searching for the secret exit from Laeldor Great Keep and any who might use it.

  The rest of the army was gathered before the keep.

  From her visions of ancient times, Vieliessar knew that “infantry” had been placed in the first ranks of the army, and had attacked the enemy before the knights charged. But she hadn’t had enough time to spend working with either her army or the new infantry to feel confident in such tactics, so she placed them at the far edges of her formation. If the enemy attempted to flank her forces, her infantry could attack. For now she simply wanted them present, both to season them and to let her knights know they would be expected to fight in concert with troops fighting afoot.

  War Prince Luthilion led Araphant’s Household guard. She had placed his forces on her tuathal side to honor him, knowing it was the dearest wish of his heart to die with a sword in his hand. She was certain the Araphant Guard would stand no matter what, for Luthilion was greatly loved and every one of his komen would die rather than dishonor him. The knight-levies of Araphant were soft with long absence from the field; she had separated the rest of them into single tailles and scattered them among her troops.

  Ivrithir held the deosil, led into battle by Caragond Heir-Princess and her brothers and sisters. Vieliessar had left Ivrithir’s dispositions up to those who for years had led her knights into battle—or on raids across Oronviel’s border—taking only a few tailles to directly support her center. Doing so showed Ivrithir honor, since the tuathal side was Araphant’s.

  Oronviel’s knights supported the tuathal side and made up the rest of the center. Two of Thoromarth’s four surviving children each led a grand-taille, one hundred forty-four knights. Prince Frochoriel of Oronviel had been left to hold Oronviel Keep in her absence and to keep guard over Princess Nanduil, who was still prisoner there—and who had no warcraft in any event.

  Bethaerian raised her warhorn to her lips and blew the signal. From Vieliessar’s camp, the war drums boomed out their challenge: come and fight, come and fight, come and fight—

  For many minutes, as the sun climbed higher and the day brightened into color, there was no response, and Vieliessar entertained the mad fantasy that the castel was empty, that Ablenariel and all his people had simply fled, leaving her to cry challenge to the empty stones. Perhaps Rithdeliel had been right and Ambrant Lightbrother had never reached Laeldor. Perhaps he had been summoned back to the Sanctuary to account for his actions in Rain Moon.

  Perhaps the Starry Hunt has carried all of them off, and Laeldor will fall to me without a blow struck!

  But at last there was movement upon the wall above the gatehouse. Lord Ablenariel had arrived.

  The War Prince of Laeldor stood flanked by two warriors in the distinctive round cap-helm and mail shirt of castel guardsmen. He wore armor, but no helm. His Lady, Gemmaire, stood beside him, brilliant in silks and jewels, her long hair blowing in the morning breeze. Bethaerian blew another call on her warhorn, and in obedience, the drums rumbled into silence.

  There were custom-hallowed words to speak now. Vieliessar would have ignored them, except that Ablenariel was inside his keep and she wanted him to come out. For one appalled moment she thought she had forgotten them, then she rose to standing in Sorodiarn’s stirrups and took a deep breath.

  “Ablenariel Laeldor! I, Vieliessar Oronviel, challenge you to lawful battle! Come forth, for your honor and your lands! If you will not set your steel against mine, be known forever as coward!”

  Behind her, around her, her knights and warriors erupted in wild cheering. Ablenariel stood silent as the cheering crested and died away, then he leaned over the battlements. “I see no War Prince here! Only a Sanctuary Mage who has forgotten her robes! Go home, little Lightborn! War is not for you!”

  “Idiot,” Thoromarth muttered, just loud enough for Vieliessar to hear.

  “Come forth, Ablenariel Laeldor! This is the second time of asking. Or do you refuse lawful challenge?” she called.

  “If you won’t come yourself, send your old wet nurse!” Thoromarth bawled. “She’s probably a more valiant knight!” He looked toward Vieliessar, his e
yes alight with the anticipation of battle. There was laughter from the massed ranks behind them. So far this was sport, as it had always been.

  “It has been long since I rode to war,” Lord Luthilion said happily. “I thank you for this entertainment, Lord Vieliessar.”

  “If there is pleasure to be had in it,” she said, turning toward him, “the pleasure is—”

  Suddenly there was an arrow where no arrow had been, protruding from Lord Luthilion’s eye socket and quivering faintly. His hands came up, scrabbling at his face and knocking down the visor of his helm, and then he fell from the back of his destrier. The animal started forward, its nostrils flaring at the scent of blood, then stopped—as it had been trained to—at the absence of weight in its saddle.

  There was a ragged cheer from the wall above the castel. At the sound, Vieliessar looked up. Ablenariel and his lady were gone, and one of the castel guard brandished his bow tauntingly.

  Sound grew behind her as knowledge of what had happened spread. Cries built to shouts to a roar. She did not know if Ablenariel had given the archer the order to attack. She did not know if Lord Luthilion had been the target or if she had. She did not know whether Ablenariel had left the ramparts because he had been coming to parley or surrender, or trying to flee. None of those things mattered now. She had the sudden sense that this was a moment she could not control any more than she could control the storms of autumn. She might turn it to serve her purpose. Or she might be crushed beneath it. She had taken a thousand steps along this path, and each had been irreversible, but this would be the greatest. She raised her hand. All she felt was terror.

  Preservation was a spell every Lightborn knew. It kept food from spoiling, meat from rotting, even ice from melting. But every spell had its opposite.

  Rot.

  The spell sped from her fingers as the arrow had sped from the bow. There had been a hundred spells laid on every element of the castel’s entrance. Vieliessar’s spell unmade them all, whether for preservation, for strength, or for endurance. Chains holding the doors of the Great Keep closed rusted away in instants. Bronze gears pitted and shattered. Rope frayed and snapped.

  The doors of Laeldor Keep sprang open.

  The force of their opening caused them to fall from age-crumbling hinges, caused the great doors to explode into rotted wood and splinters. The outer court was exposed. At its far end, the portcullis that blocked entrance to the Great Hall crashed down, its corroded bronze shattering on impact, leaving the castel defenseless. In that instant, Vieliessar spurred Sorodiarn forward. Behind her, howling for vengeance, came the knights of Araphant.

  The outer courtyard was filled with mounted knights. Araphant’s knights—Luthilion’s personal meisne—closed with them, forcing them back in a tangle of swords and limbs and hooves. Beyond them, the doorway of the Great Hall gaped wide, its doors and bars shattered by decay. Vieliessar’s army pushed its way past the knights in the outer courtyard to gain the interior, and within moments, the Great Hall, too, was a battleground.

  Vieliessar spared a thought for Ambrant—was he here? a prisoner?—but she could not stop to search for him and she did not stop to fight. Lord Ablenariel had been on the battlements only moments before: he could not have gone far. But every castel’s design was unique, and she did not know where the steps and the passageways were in Laeldor Keep. Abelnariel Laeldor might escape the castel entirely as she searched for him.

  No! He will not!

  She vaulted from Sorodiarn’s back, her steel sabatons ringing and slipping on the stone floor. She yanked off her gauntlet and slapped her bare hand against the wall, summoning the Light as she did. Knowing. With the casting of that spell, the whole shape of the castel unfolded behind her eyes, its corridors and secret passages, every mystery the stones held.

  She ran.

  Behind her she heard shouts. The clangor of metal. Screams. Was it like this in Farcarinon the night my father’s castel fell? She ran until she found a door that led to the inner courtyard. Across that peaceful, deserted space was a low wall with a door. When Vieliessar struck the door with the pommel of her sword, the rotted wood splintered. She dashed into the mews, which led up to the outer wall. Ablenariel must come down this staircase or know he would be trapped above the gatehouse until he died.

  Behind her she heard a soft scrape of metal against stone. She checked and pivoted, bringing up her blade just in time to face attack from two dismounted knights. A vagrant thought slipped through her mind—I told Thoromarth the truth—as she closed with them, for nothing would serve her now but the battle skill Gunedwaen and Rithdeliel had taught her, candlemark by painful candlemark. There was not enough space to swing a sword, barely enough to move. She drew her dagger with her left hand as she forced them back. The passageway was narrow and neither of her foes was used to fighting afoot. One fell, floundering gracelessly under the weight of his armor, and she leaped over him, slamming her body into the second knight and driving her dagger through the eye-slit of his helm as his body struck the wall of the mews.

  She was trying to yank her weapon free when the knight who had fallen dragged her from her feet. She fell backward, hearing a ringing of metal as her helm struck the stones, and the enemy knight knelt on her chest. For a frozen instant it seemed he could not figure out what to do next. Likely he had never faced such a situation in his life, fighting on foot and without his sword—Vieliessar realized she was lying on his blade. Then he grabbed her shoulders and began simply to batter her against the paving stones. Dazed, disoriented, she raised her sword, but it scraped harmlessly across his back; she did not have the angle for a strike.

  Madness, to think she might die here, wrestling some unknown knight, but she would not use the Light to kill.

  Then suddenly he was gone, lifted away. She scrabbled backward, clutching her sword, and saw Ambrant Lightbrother, his arm about the armored neck of the knight, looking stunned at what he had done.

  He must have been on the wall with Ablenariel.…

  “Go. Go,” she gasped, clawing her way to her feet, and Ambrant hesitated a moment longer, then shoved the knight forward, turned, and ran. The armored figure staggered, hands flailing. His sword lay on the stones, and the Code of Battle said a swordless knight was no lawful prey.

  Vieliessar didn’t care. She had never cared, she had known from the first moments she had studied it that the Code was a toy that turned war into a pointless game. Now she felt sick with fury, filled with a rage so vast she could barely breathe. She had followed the Code when she had come against Laeldor, and Laeldor had slain Lord Luthilion, and though he had died as he would have wished to, that was somehow the blackest joke of all. She raised her sword and beat the nameless, faceless knight of Laeldor back, and back, and back again, as he raised empty hands to defend himself and cried out in surrender. He retreated until he fell backward over the body of the other knight she had slain, and then she stood over him, striking at his neck again and again, until the metal of his helm shifted and sheared, until dark blood spurted up and flowed out upon the stones.

  Then she turned and ran.

  Her sabatons slipped and clattered as she raced up the stairs, for the steps were steep and narrow and her armored boots were not meant for walking upon stone. She reached the broad outer wall upon which the sentries walked and stood for a moment, gazing around herself. The walkway was empty. Outside the castel, most of her army sat unmoving. There was no one outside the castel for them to fight, and no space for them to enter.

  Then she saw movement. Ablenariel and Gemmaire crossed the ramparts above the gatehouse, moving in Vieliessar’s direction. They must have tried to go down the stairs on the far side and found them blocked. Six guardsmen clustered around Laeldor’s lord and lady. A castel’s guards were its watchmen and last defenders, but it so was unimaginably rare for a castel to be taken that it was unlikely they’d ever done battle face-to-face. Vieliessar ran forward, her sword in her hand. Ladyholder Gemmaire saw her first.
r />   It seemed to Vieliessar that the defenders and the lord and lady in their charge moved as slowly as if they were executing the figures of an elaborate dance. Two of the guardsmen came toward her, pikes leveled. She flattened herself against the battlements as they reached her, and as they hesitated, she grabbed the pike of the outermost one and used it to fling him from the ramparts. The other guardsman clung to the battlements as he thrust his pike at her. She trapped the shaft of the heavy, clumsy weapon against the wall and struck low with her sword. The guardsmen wore chain mail and heavy boots, but no armor upon their legs. The guardsman’s face contorted in a soundless scream as he fell.

  She felt rather than heard the first click of an arrow against her armor. Four guardsmen remained; the two at the front held bows in their hands. But they carried the horseman’s bow, not the walking bow. It would have taken both skill and luck to put an arrow through one of the eye-slits of her helm, and the shafts did not have power enough to penetrate her armor. They continued to nock and release as she approached, but just as she reached them, they threw down their weapons.

  Go. She gestured broadly—speech was impossible in the din of battle. They edged backward, but were trapped between their enemy and their lord. Ladyholder Gemmaire was clutching her husband’s surcoat. He should have faced me, Vieliessar thought. He should have been willing to face me. Everyone held their places for a moment. Then Vieliessar took a step forward.

  Ablenariel threw down his sword.

  It bounced against the stone and fell with its hilt overhanging the edge of the walk. Ladyholder Gemmaire snatched for it, but too late. The blade overbalanced and fell.

  The guardsmen slid past Vieliessar, their bodies pressed tightly against the battlements. Their lord had surrendered. All they wished to do was flee. Vieliessar gestured for Lord Ablenariel to remove his helmet, and when he had, she stepped forward and took it from him. Ladyholder Gemmaire flew at her, fingers curved into claws. Vieliessar struck her, backhanded. The spikes across the knuckles of her gauntlet ripped skin and Gemmaire staggered; Ablenariel grabbed her before she could fall.