An Armory of Swords Page 26

  That’s over, Tegan told herself. I wear it now on a whim, without anger. But on this morning of all mornings, I will trust my whims, my intuitions. It’s a bauble my hand has reached for, and perhaps my hand knows more than I am willing to know. So be it.

  Tegan fastened the pendant around her neck and hurried out into the bright morning.

  Osyr’s mount danced with the nervousness his master transmitted. Osyr on a riding-beast was a near-disaster at best, his thin legs never meant to control a mount, his hands too jerky on the reins. The beast he rode was of necessity thick of lip, but stolid enough to follow Seagus.

  “You are dressed to ride, Tegan?” Osyr asked.

  “I would see you triumph,” Tegan said.

  In the fields outside camp, Osyr’s troops mustered in good order, a hundred men mounted, two hundred more on foot, armed with pikes and spears. Their riding-beasts breathed clouds of excitement into the chill air of early spring. The day was threatening to dawn bright, and Blacknail muttered weather-spells as urgently as he could from his perch on a dumpy load-beast.

  “Keep safe. When this is done, you must choose a proper princess for me,” Osyr said.

  “Just so,” Tegan said, thinking, never, my Lord, would I saddle any woman born of woman with such a burden. Tegan mounted her riding-beast and fell into place beside Dorn, the lanky beastmaster carrying his pet ferretsnake, as usual. He squinted at a nearby sycamore, where a mated pair of great owls waited to scout out the land. The owls had been coerced out of day-sleep this morning. They would be unhappy about it, and offer their complaints to Dorn with each message they brought him.

  Always, there were plans within plans. If Idris died today, then his lands would have at least a new master. That accomplished, Tegan hoped for so much more. That Osyr might die, too, well, that might happen or it might not.

  The bigger hope was to free the children, and for that, the mine would have to be not just closed, but destroyed. The greed the gems caused could be closed away, but unless the stones that lurked in its depths could be hidden forever, Tegan could buy only a few years of peace from its evil. Someone else would crave them.

  The opals were laid in narrow strips of clean earth between bands of poisons from the Old World. Matana had learned that, and told the Duke Idris so, before the sight of one of the gems had ensorceled him.

  “It is possible to bring them out,” Matana said, “without killing the miners directly. But only a child, a small child, can get into the passages between the poisons. Even then, the children would sicken and die if they were kept for more than a third of a year at such work. The price of these stones is too great, my Lord Idris.”

  He had agreed, and sought out dwarves to investigate the mine. The dwarves, being fellows of good sense, had refused to work the place.

  “The humors are evil,” they had told him, and left.

  But gems began to appear in the markets, polychrome opals with enchantment in their depths. The Lord Idris had paid his crofters well for the use of their children, and returned them, pale but seeming well, at the end of a year. The crofters, by and large, had taken their money and moved from Idris. They went into the towns, or to different lands. The duke brought other families to his farms, and other children to the mines. They sickened and died in time, but of different things, wasting sicknesses, weak blood. It had been a decade of years before the White Temple related the cases one to the other.

  But the duke persisted, and there were always some who didn’t believe the stories, but did believe that the Duke Idris paid well. Memory was a slippery thing, easily pushed aside with coin and dreams of coin. Forgetting was so easy.

  Tegan would not have heeded the stories, save that her niece, Lyse’s child, had died in a collapsed tunnel. It was after that that Lyse, grieving, had heard of other deaths, and told Tegan of them, and that Tegan had learned what really killed the children of Idris. She learned then to bless the hatred that gave her courage, the hatred that had begun with an order to forget, an order she had disobeyed.

  The memory of it flooded through her, a memory that Noya had wakened.

  Tegan stood alone in the little clearing walled with wildrose, guarded by the old oak, filled with blackberries ripe as garnets, where a bird sang sleepy half-songs in a drowsy mid-morning. She settled her basket on her hip and reached for a blackberry, ripe and juicy. It stained her fingers with the color of garnets and blood.

  I will remember, she told herself. Remember... what?

  Had she heard someone whistle up a riding-beast, the creak of leather as someone mounted?

  I will remember, she thought later, her basket full, the sun hot on her neck, and old Rollo’s spotted kid munching blackberry canes beside her. Funny, Tegan thought. Silly little boy goat, for a minute this morning I thought I saw a faun, with spots like yours.

  The great owl spiraled down toward the line of riding-beasts. Dorn pulled his mount out of formation and galloped toward the tree where the owl waited. Tegan followed the beastmaster.

  “Hungry,” the owl said.

  “What news?” Dorn asked. “Earn your mouse.” He dangled one by its tail. The ferretsnake darted for it. Dorn batted at the snake and it settled back around Dorn’s neck. “What travels on the road, owl?”

  “White,” the owl said.

  “Idris rides, then. I think,” Dorn said.

  “Mean owls,” the great owl said.

  “Idris has sent out his owls?”

  The owl turned his head half around. Maybe that meant yes.

  Idris was warned, then.

  “Small mouse,” the owl said.

  “You’ll have a bucket of mice when we’re done,” Dorn said. “I promise.”

  “If you live,” the owl said. He stretched out his beak and took the mouse.

  Tegan wheeled her mount and galloped for Seagus, for the head of the column. Behind her, she heard the cry go up, “Forewarned! Forewarned! Close ranks!”

  I will take Idris, Tegan thought. I will kill him myself, if I can.

  She crested a little hill. On the road below, a procession all in white, twenty or more mounted men, rode single-file. She spied Idris in the center of the column. So innocent he looks, this old man, Tegan thought, but as the Osyr riders appeared, the old man found a sword and bared it, spitting curses through his few remaining teeth. Tegan heard Seagus yelling beside her before his mount pulled ahead of hers. She spurred her beast forward, her sword raised. The world had filled with mounted men in the Idris colors of green and gray.

  Seagus parried the duke’s blow and skewered the old man. The Idris Duke’s riding-beast stumbled and the corpse went flying. Osyr, close behind Tegan, reined up sharply. Tegan cut at a ‘pilgrim’ beside her. His chainmail glittered beneath his loose white robe. The bright sun suddenly ducked behind a cloud, Blacknail’s spells successful at last, or the clouds simply a whim of weather. Tegan fought through the clot of pilgrim soldiers and raced up the road. She glanced back and saw Osyr, off his mount, kneeling beside the duke’s body. He clutched a sack in his hand, lifted it aloft, and remounted.

  Well, let him have those stones for his own. If this day went well, they were the last the world would ever see.

  Seagus caught up with her, and behind him, she heard the thunder of riding-beasts, a century of Osyr knights who howled like banshees.

  At the outskirts of the charging formation, she could see gray and green riders cut toward Osyr’s ranks, and be cut down. There, at the pass, Castle Idris loomed, but Tegan and her army sped past it, almost out of range of the archers on the ramparts. Seagus raised an arm as if to shield her from the arrows. Some clattered against mail, some struck at the ranks. None of Osyr’s men fell, but a few of their mounts now sported flesh wounds.

  To the mine, Tegan thought. To the mine, and to hell with what’s behind us.

  She found she was laughing, but it sounded more like a shriek. Her riding-beast stretched her neck and ran flat out, as battle-maddened as her mistress. Between
Tegan’s breasts, the foil-wrapped stone nestled safe. She bent forward into the wind. Her tiny silver arrow swung free on its chain, as sharp as the day she had found it.

  Tegan’s mother plied a hoe around the sweetgourds, and wisewoman Meraud had come to help her, for a share of the gourds when the frost came and turned them gold. Chop, talk, chop, gossip, it made the work go not faster, but with less boredom.

  The heavy basket weighed against her hip. Tegan was proud of her labors, enough to make a tart with just a touch of hoarded honey, hot enough to burn and cooled with sweet milk poured over, and plenty of berries left to put in the crock for a winter’s wine. Tegan was hungry.

  “I said, you may have some of those stringbeans, take them, lest she come back at night and empty the field, or so I feared, but she smiled and gave me a coin for them.” Tegan’s mother whacked at a weed and it flew through the air, its roots white.

  “The warrior woman? I am not surprised, Edda,” Meraud said. “She is a lady, after all.”

  “That one? Brown as an elk’s hide, no lady would let her skin brown like that. Tegan, where is your hat?”

  “I forgot it,” Tegan said.

  “The Lady Idane,” Meraud said. “The Lady Idane herself has paid you a visit, and you thought she would steal your beans.”

  “Is that her name? Do you know her?” Mother asked.

  “So, we had words last night, and she listened to my tale, and she went out to the highroad this morning, I think.”

  I am already gone from here, Tegan thought. These two are already part of my past. I will miss them.

  “Which way did she go?” Tegan asked. The words flew out with urgency, with pleading.

  Her mother looked up. “Tegan? Is something wrong?” Edda straightened slowly. Meraud had said she had rough spots on her bones, and had given her simples for the pain.

  “I’m fine, Mother. Meraud, which way did she go?”

  “Where she had business, I expect,” Mother said. “Business far from here; it’s nothing of ours what those women do.”

  Tegan promised herself she would come back, someday. Whenever she could, yes, and bring gifts.

  Meraud planted her hoe and leaned on it as if it were a crutch. She looked at Tegan, at the berries. “You met her.”

  “I would follow her.”

  “So,” Meraud said. “So.”

  Tegan would remember her mother’s face as long as she lived, the love, the grief.

  “I must, Mother. You know I don’t fit here, I don’t belong, Lyse, you’ll have Lyse, and grandchildren soon. I’ll never be as good a wife as Lyse is, or skilled with herbs like Meraud, or—” Or happy to stay in this village, where nothing changes, ever, not now that I have seen a goddess in her power.

  “Or beautiful? Or loved? Oh, child.”

  “Many go to them,” Meraud said. “Most come home.”

  “I will not,” Tegan said.

  “Take the berries to the porch,” Mother said. “They will get hot here in the sun.”

  “I will go, Mother.” Not to the porch. Far away. Far away from here.

  Mother struck a vicious blow at a tiny weed, as if Tegan had not spoken at all. The hoe made a grating sound, metal on metal. “What’s this, now? Something to break my hoe?” She knelt, quick enough in spite of the pain in her bones. Her fingers grubbed in the earth.

  “Don’t, Mother.” Tegan put the basket down and knelt beside her. “Let me help you.”

  Coins. Not a hoard of gold, no, worn thin coppers and coins of silver.

  “Well,” Mother said. “Well.” Her gnarled fingers cupped earth and metal.

  Meraud rocked back and forth, braced by her hoe. She hissed at the sight of the coins and drew away from the tiny black arrow Tegan held like a needle. Tegan scratched at it with her close-bitten thumbnail. It was silver.

  “It’s for you,” Meraud said. “For you, Tegan.”

  They seemed so far away, these two goodwomen with their beans and their long, busy days.

  “A sign,” Mother said. “Go if you must. I would not keep you here against your will.” There were tears in her eyes.

  Meraud beckoned, and Tegan came to the old woman’s side.

  “West,” Meraud whispered. “The Lady Idane has gone west. But comfort your mother before you leave. Will you do that?”

  “Yes,” Tegan said. “I will try.”

  But she left in the night, left with good-byes unsaid, anxious for the journey.

  The entrance to the mine was well-guarded. Tegan led the Osyr knights into a rain of javelins. Above the mouth of the cave, she spied a rank of men with crossbows. She pointed to them, screaming warning.

  Seagus left her side, calling up twenty men who veered from the charge, speeding toward a side path that led up past the cave’s mouth.

  Bolts from above chattered on armor. Two of Tegan’s men fell. Her riding-beast dodged aside, but Tegan urged her forward again. The beast seemed as enraged as the woman felt. There had been fear. Now there was only rage, rage at the sight of that low tunnel faced with sagging timbers, that black mouth into hell. The entrance was barred by an iron grate, a cruel doorway to let foul air out, to keep the miners in.

  Tegan’s sword seemed to strike of its own will. She slashed at an outstretched arm, cut down at an unprotected shoulder, heard a sigh as the man beside her gutted an Idris spearman.

  Her protector went down, felled by a bolt. Tegan heard Seagus bellowing above her, and the hissing of the bolts began to slacken.

  “Bring up the ram!” Tegan yelled.

  An aisle formed behind her, centered on the grate. Twenty Osyr men hauled up a huge oaken log mounted on straps.

  “Not at the center! The timbers! Hit the timbers!”

  The new-cut log crashed into old wood. The grate fell.

  Tegan dismounted and slapped at the flank of her riding-beast. The war-trained beast reared, twisting to bring her steel-clad hooves down on an Idris man. The tip of his falling sword cut a long gash through the cloak on Tegan’s back. Tegan tore at its fastenings and threw it aside.

  She turned at the ruined grate and saw, below her on the mountain’s dark flank, a melee of green and gray fighting Osyr’s bronze and black, a knot of Osyr men surrounding their duke and his banner.

  Tegan ducked under the sagging timbers, into the mine itself. She held her bloody sword like a beacon.

  The woman had left the tiny silver arrow, how else could it have got in Edda’s field? She had buried it for Tegan to find. But the little weed had grown in undisturbed earth. It could have been an old thing, a bauble tossed away centuries before.

  No, Tegan told herself. She called me. She left a sign.

  All through that journey, west, she clutched at her talisman, polished bright and tied round her neck with a length of green ribbon. The coins were gone, save for four thin coppers. Cold and tired, Tegan stumbled along a stream that came down from the high pass in the western mountains.

  At dusk. She had some plan to make a fire, to curl up beside it, to try to remember why she was here and not at home. She was making too much noise, clumsy-footed and hungry. She feared, or expected, dark men and danger in the high places, for Meraud had told tales of such things, but there had been no danger that she had been able to spy out, and no men at all except for fat inn-keepers who had told her she reminded them of their daughters.

  She slipped on a mossy rock, unseen in the dark, and sat down, splat, in the middle of the stream.

  “Shit!”

  Tegan hauled herself out of the water, sobbing like a wetnosed baby, and over her sobs, she heard a giggle.

  A girl. Giggling.

  Then silence.

  “Come out where I can see you, damn it!” Tegan yelled.

  Nothing.

  A single twig snapped, uphill from the stream, yes. Behind—that rock. Tegan pulled off her shoes, wet and useless anyway, and stalked the noise. A girl, giggling, in the high mountains, unafraid, must be one of them, one of the Gray Ar
chers, the women who wore trousers and kept flocks of stunted griffins as flying steeds—although that tale might be only a wishful tale told to children, for no one had seen a griffin in living memory.

  Not behind the rock. Tegan sank into its shadow and waited. If the elusive girl wasn’t one of the warriors, she was at least a girl, and she must know where food was, and shelter.

  Click, a pebble disturbed.

  Tegan moved toward the sound, back toward the water. A fish splashed, once, upstream.

  There, beyond that stand of quiverleaf saplings. There was a glow from a small fire, above it the silhouette of an archer poised on a high cliff, her arrow nocked. Under the shadow of the cliff, the silent welling of a deep sourcespring reflected early stars. Women sat around the fire, dark shapes, unconcerned. One of them wore her heavy hair in a knot at the back of her neck. Tegan walked flat-footed to the circle of firelight. She pulled her ribbon over her neck, with its four copper coins tied in a twist of cloth and the tiny silver arrow all gleaming, and laid them at the feet of the Lady Idane.

  “It’s all I have to give you,” she said.

  “Oh, bother,” the Lady Idane said. “Someone get her some food, would you?”

  Fear me, Tegan thought. Fear me, little ones. Fear is all I have to give you now.

  In her red skirts, holding her dripping sword, Tegan entered the stench of urine and poison, a low space roofed with and floored with earth. Rows of cots stretched into the shadows. This was where her niece had slept, chained to her cot at night, freed only to be crushed in the earth.

  If the pale squat man who was this room’s last guard meant to beg mercy, he moved too late. Tegan sliced a two-handed blow at his neck as he stepped forward. He fell, a mountain of pale flesh. In the shadows, Tegan saw the gleam of terrified eyes. The children had fled into the tunnels.

  “The witch!” a child screamed.

  “The Lady in Red. She’ll hurt us!”

  “Run!” Tegan yelled. “Ardneh, help them! Run, I say!”

  She stepped aside from the opened grate. As they ran past her, scrambling around the fallen guard, Tegan saw a welter of thin legs, of flailing arms. The children were as covered with earth as grubs. Some of them screamed. Most were silent.