Prince Jastri got the battle he so ardently desired on the morning after Princess Pandsala’s arrival. The High Prince’s troops engaged Lord Chaynal’s just after dawn, having crossed the river during the night at one bridge on the main road to the north and a second bridge hastily constructed much closer to the encamped armies. Chay, alerted before daybreak, nodded his satisfaction at the prospect of a fight, ordered his troops to ready themselves as silently as possible, and ‘was waiting for the attack. His captains were frantic to assault and burn the bridges, but Chay had his own plans for them.
Prince Jastri’s horse forded the river to the south, and came north in a flanking maneuver designed to distract from Roelstra’s main thrust. Design and execution were two entirely different things. Jastri and his unseasoned troop of young highborns proved unequal to the hail of arrows and spears that greeted them a full measure before they had expected to encounter resistance. Shocked and furious, the young prince was forced into a confused retreat. He lost thirty-nine of his one hundred horse to Desert archers and the river. Lord Dawi, to whom Chay had entrusted the ambush, returned from it with only slight losses and in good time to give support to the main defenses.
But by late afternoon Roelstra’s troops had gained a swath of shoreline to which they clang ferociously. Chay withdrew, willing to let them have their landhold for now, unwilling to spend any more lives trying to retake it. He left enough archers behind to discourage further advances, and repaired to his tent with his captains, his son, and Lord Dawi.
“Losses of eighteen horse, thirty-seven foot, and fourteen archers,” he summarized after they had given their reports. “Scouts estimate enemy casualties of about twice that, but they have twice our numbers to begin with. I’m not interested in a war of attrition.” He toyed with a jeweled eating knife that had been a present from Tobin, watching the candlelight play off its rubies and steel. “But we have an advantage now.”
Lord Davvi expressed the surprise of the others in a single word. “How?”
Chay smiled tightly. “I make their numbers at upward of seven hundred, and by tomorrow morning about half that should be on this side of the river. I want regular reports on the numbers of men and horses and supplies brought over during the night.”
“What we ought to do is fire those bridges, my lord.”
“No, Gryden,” he told Radzyn’s guard commander. “Not yet. When half their forces are here within our grasp, then we will burn their bridges behind them.” He drew a line on the parchment map with his knife, making a deep scar. “I want to show Roelstra something really spectacular.”
“Why not now, when there are fewer of them to rise against us?” Dawi asked.
“Because I’m going to crush the High Prince in two battles. Two are all we can afford. Once we’ve butchered half his army, we’ll cross the Faolain and do the same to the other half.”
“But if the bridges are burned—“
“I have my ideas on that as well. No, Gryden, you will not call a meeting of the engineers and start tearing down trees. Our bridges will be quite different from Roelstra’s. Questions?” He eyed each in turn, noting they were puzzled, exactly as he had intended. Zehava had taught him long ago to keep his battle plans secret as long as possible; it had nothing to do with trust, only prudence. “Very well. Dismissed.”
Maarken stayed, taking up his father’s battle gear for cleaning. Chay watched the boy seat himself on the carpet near a lamp encased in clear glass. The careful fingers began their work, rubbing at the dull film of dirt on steel.
“You should be in bed,” he said.
“A squire doesn’t sleep until his lord does—or unless,” Maarken responded.
Chay smiled. “Nice try. Now you can tell me what’s really bothering you.”
The boy glanced up, then back down at his work. “Father, you don’t need archers and arrows to fire the bridges. You have me.”
His mind spun. He had never paid much attention to the various levels of faradhi training, not until Sioned had begun tutoring his wife. Ten rings for a Lord or Lady of Goddess Keep, seven for Master Sunrunners—
“My kind of Fire won’t damage the bridges as much if I’m careful, because I can put it out with a thought.” five for a trained Sunrunner, three for an apprentice— “I don’t even have to be that close, just so I can see where you want me to place the Fire.” and one for the ability to call Fire. Chay stared at his son’s ringless hands that still rubbed assiduously at an imagined stain on the sword.
“No one will be in danger, Father. Roelstra won’t be alerted by any movement of troops. I can do it.”
“When those bridges go, there’ll be people on them. People who will die.” He waited until Maarken glanced up, held the bright blue gaze with his own. “I won’t have you responsible for that.”
“Andrade has sided with the Desert against Roelstra,” Maarken reminded him.
“But not to kill.”
“You have,” was the flat reply. “Your weapon is this.” He lifted the sword. “Mine, for now, can be Fire.”
“No!” he shouted at his son, afraid. “If you don’t see the difference, then you’ll never use either while I’m around to stop you! I want you to grow up to be Radzyn’s lord someday, not an outlaw condemned for misuse of faradhi powers you shouldn’t have in the first place!”
The sword slipped from Maarken’s fingers and brushed a silvery note from the shield on its way to the carpet. “Do you feel that way?” he whispered, his cheeks white. “Do you?”
“Yes. And it took this to make me realize it.” He shook his head wearily. “Do you have am idea Andrade did by marrying her sister to your grandfather?”
“I’ve thought about it. Meath and Eohe and Prince Lleyn make sure I think about it. I was born as I am. and I couldn’t change it even if I wanted to. But it’s not just me, is it? It’s Sioned’s children, when she has them. Prince and Sunrunner both. How do you think we’ll all turn out, Father? Power-mad and ready to slaughter everyone who gets in our way? Is that what you think?” he accused bitterly.
Chay bit his lip, then said, “I think that I have a son I’m proud to call mine. Maarken, the world is changing and people like you will change it further. Born to one kind of power — but born with quite another.”
“We’re not one thing or another, Andry and I. Will we grow up to rule the lands you give us, or will we be ruled by Andrade?” His eyes were haunted now. “What am I to be, Father?”
Rohan would understand, Chay thought suddenly. He loved dragons and had been forced to kill one; he wanted desperately to live by rule of law, not by the sword. Rohan would understand the division in Maarken’s soul. But Sioned would understand even better, for it was the choice she lived with every day of her life.
Chay could and did take that choice from his son now. “I’m your father and your commander, and you’re doubly bound to obey me. You will not call Fire, Maarken. I forbid it.”
Rebellion and relief warred on the boy’s face for ~a moment. But he bent his head in submission. “Yes, my lord.”
Yet they both knew this was only a postponement of the inevitable choices Maarken would one day have to make on his own.
“Come,” Chay said, “time for bed, whether we sleep or not. One of the first rales of war is that the commander must always appear to be resting easily in his tent at night.”
The Flametower at Stronghold was an excellent vantage from which to observe the arrival of the Merida host. Tobin and Maeta stood at the windows, watching the hundred armed soldiers on horseback, their battle harness gleaming in the last evening light. The two women exchanged a glance.
“Will they try tonight or wait for morning?” Tobin asked.
“First light,” the warrior replied. “Look at them down there, setting up camp right in the shadow of Stronghold! Arrogant idiots. They act as if we’re already beneath their swords.” Her smile turned feral. “I’ll enjoy this.”
They started downstairs and Tobin said, “Chay would, too. As it happens, Maeta, I’m not a bad shot myself. And there’s a nice little niche left of the gates that would fit me like a glove.”
“I’m not afraid of your great roaring stallion of a husband, if that’s what you’re hinting. He can shout all he wants at me for putting you into the fight. The place is yours, along with as many Merida as you care to bring down.” She chuckled. “I remember when my mother gave you archery lessons.”
Instruction by Myrdal herself was recommendation enough, it seemed. “I’ll find a bow of the right weight, then, and be ready before dawn.”
“What about your boys? Locking them in their rooms won’t work, you know. Would you permit them to run arrows for us? If I give them the first section of the relay, they’ll be safe in the inner court the whole time.”
“Thank you. I really had no idea how to keep them out of this, and your way, they’ll be useful without being in danger.”
Well before dawn, Stronghold was ready—and absolutely silent. Tobin, dressed in riding clothes that blended with the stones around her, wedged herself into a narrow stone shelf cut exactly for this purpose in the outer walls of the gatehouse. Slung at her back and in a second quiver at her feet were arrows she had spent the night repainting in her husband’s red and white. There was nothing to be done about the blue fletching, but she wanted the Merida to know that Radzyn was represented here. When her fifty ran out, she would use those stockpiled in Rohan’s armory. But with a hundred Merida out there and twenty archers trained by Myrdal defending Stronghold, Tobin had the feeling she would run out of targets long before she ran out of red-and-white arrows.
It began when a helmeted Merida rode up the canyon toward the tunnel’s mouth. He reined in and lifted a hand in a pompous gesture that made Tobin want to giggle. The desire increased as he shouted in a ringing voice that had undoubtedly procured him this mission:
“Usurpers of Stronghold! Surrender to us now, and live! You cannot hope to survive against us, and there is no hope from north or south! Open the gates to the rightful rulers of the Desert!”
Because she was listening for it, Tobin heard the soft hiss of an arrow and was able to follow its flight. It sank into the man’s saddle a finger’s breadth from his thigh, and trembled there delicately. To his credit, he did not flinch. But he did ride back down with something akin to haste.
There followed a short wait while the sun climbed the eastern sky over the Long Sand and the shadows shifted, grew sharper. Tobin began to wish for the cool sea breezes of Radzyn. The sound of horses up the road made her forget the sweat that stuck her tunic to her skin, and she readied herself to draw her bowstring.
Unhappily, the Merida were not the fools Maeta had hoped. Not only the soldiers but their mounts were well protected by leather harness studded with bronze. Donning it had caused the delay. Tobin reflected sourly that this was unquestionably where Rohan’s gold had gone, and the artisans of Cunaxa had been hard at work to their great profit. She promised herself the Merida would not profit today.
She counted six rows of six each, horses riding shoulder-to-shoulder from one wall of the canyon to the other. When the first went down, close quarters would confuse and hamper the rest. Yet the signal for the first flight did not come, and Tobin began to fret. The riders were within range. She could almost discern eye-color behind the helmets with their long nose-pieces and cheek-guards.
At last a long, thin wail split the heat, a horn made of dragon bone, the ascending notes startling the horses below. Arrows spewed from the canyon and the gatehouse. It was all as Maeta had planned — the high shrieks of pain from the horses as they bucked and reared to escape the arrows pricking their flesh, the shouts and curses from the riders as steel found its way between and through leather. Tobin nocked, pulled and let fly with cool regularity, and twenty others just like her did the same.
Eight down, nine, ten — she saw why Maeta had waited until the last row of horses was in range, for the injured at the back pushed the others forward, and fallen horses would block part of the road if the Merida decided to retreat.
But they did not retreat, and all at once a tan-clad body fell screaming from Stronghold’s gatehouse and thudded to the hard-packed sand below. Above and opposite Tobin were a dozen archers, perched precariously on a ledge rising above the canyon. She had no time to wonder how they had gotten there, for she heard the hissing of an arrow and the clink of its steel head in the rock at her shoulder. She changed her stance and let fly, hearing Maeta shout orders that all on Tobin’s side of the gate do the same. The others were not in position to respond to this new attack.
Another of Stronghold’s archers was lost, plummeting down like a fallen dragon with an arrow in .her chest. The riders assaulted the first gates, opened one of them, gained access to the long tunnel. Maeta commanded a regrouping above the outer courtyard, where they would be out of range of Merida bows and could pick off the horsemen when they breached the inner gates.
Tobin plucked up her second quiver with a muffled curse that was half-annoyance, half-pain. An arrow had scored her thigh though she only noticed it now that she had to move. Struggling to climb down from her niche, she stumbled into ‘the gatehouse, still cursing.
She followed the others through a narrow passage to the crenellations above the inner gates. The archers arranged themselves, grim-faced now, the atmosphere of easy victory gone. Old Myrdal was down in the courtyard yelling at servants who had armed themselves with sword, spear, and shield — anything not taken to Remagev with Ostvel and the rest of the Stronghold guard.
Maeta gave Tobin’s leg a rough inspection and an even rougher bandage that stank of herbs. “Clever me,” the commander said bitterly. “But don’t worry — we’ll get them on this side. I’ve ordered your boys to the back passage by the grotto, just in case.”
“What back passage by the grotto?” Tobin demanded, but Maeta was already gone.
Whatever salve had been on the bandage, it soothed away the pain and Tobin no longer limped as she found position near a man who had a similar bandage wrapped around the broken haft of an arrow in his hip. Blood seeped through and he could put no weight on his leg, but he was balanced and ready just the same as they waited for the Merida to come through the gates directly underneath. At that point the Stronghold archers would shoot the Merida in the back.
Tobin traded a smile with the man — but the daughter of a warrior prince abruptly became the mother of twin sons whose shouts of defiance echoed up from the courtyard below. As the Merida battered at the gates, Sorin and Andry battered long kitchen knives against small shields used for training, shields nearly as tall as they were.
“No!” Tobin screamed. “Andry! Sorin! Run!”
But the gates toppled and the horses clattered into the courtyard. And she had only the slender red-and-white arrows with which to defend her sons.
“It’s this way,” Sioned told Rohan, leading him to a passage through the rock hitherto unknown to him. He followed her through the cleft that was just large enough for a single horse to pass. Two people on foot negotiated the stone corridor swiftly and easily, and before Rohan knew it they were beside the grotto, panting for breath.
“Come on,” he managed when he had caught enough air to speak. “Goddess, I hope we aren’t too late — “
They ran to the deserted inner courtyard, but beyond the walls were sounds unmistakable even to Sioned, who had never heard real war: clashes of steel on steel, horses’ screams, cries of the wounded and dying. Rohan gave her a boost and then took her hands to haul himself up onto the walls. He gave the chaos a single glance, then leaped down and sprinted for the nearest fallen sword.
Sioned stayed where she was. The Merida horse had spread out in groups of three and four, tight little knots bristling with hooves and swords on all sides. She chose the nearest of them, lifted her ringless hands, and encased the group in Fire.
She did the same to a second knot and a third, creating small infernos of screaming, burning flesh. A rider broke from another trio and hurtled toward her, determined to slay this wild-eyed, fire-haired witch who called down Sunrunner’s Fire on them. She wove a net of flames around him, too, with a casual gesture of her hand. His sword clanged to the ground from burned fingers and he shrieked in pain. Sioned smiled very sweetly and wrapped another group of horses in flames.
Rohan saw the Fire spring up four times, five, six. He plunged his borrowed sword into a nearby blaze, killing men and women he could barely see. When the rest of the Merida turned and took flight back through the tunnel, he bellowed Sioned’s name. She was still on her knees on the narrow wall, rocking lightly back and forth, her hands spread out before her and her hair streaming down like a river of her own Fire.
“Sioned!” he cried again. “Enough!”
Her hands fell. Her gaze found his-and her smile died. She swayed, nearly toppling. Myrdal limped over and held up her arms, helping her down from the wall. Fire had vanished; it had not burned long enough to kill, but the stench of seared flesh and hide was nauseating in the heat.
Rohan found a horse whose rider had fallen to a red-and-white arrow—and what was Tobin doing here, anyway? he asked himself as he caught sight of his sister’s slight figure in the confusion. Leaping up, he reined the terrified animal around and kicked it through the gates.
Tobin snatched her sons into her arms. They were mercifully whole, though Sorin’s tunic was ripped and Andry had a long, shallow cut on one arm. She embraced the pair fiercely, then let them go anc resounding blow on the backside that put tc~ eyes.
“How dare you disobey me!” she raved. “Don t \ou ever do such a thing again! Get out of my sight before I have you horsewhipped!” She pulled them close for another breathless hug, then pushed them toward the keep. “Move!”
They did. Tobin straightened up, near to fainting with anger and relief. And then she caught sight of Sioned. Myrdal was supporting her, for Sioned was only half-conscious. Tobin forgot her own dizziness and hurried over, wedging her shoulder beneath Sioned’s other arm.
“Get her inside,” Myrdal said. “Can you manage by yourself?”
“I can walk,” Sioned whispered with no voice at all.
Tobin looked her over. Sioned’s face, neck, and bare arms were blistered and bloodied. Even her hands, ringless now and without even white circles where those rings should have been, were sun-ravaged. And the body Tobin circled with her arm was nothing but bones.
“I can manage,” she told Myrdal. “She can’t weigh any more than I do. Sioned, come with me now, dearest. It’s all right. You’re home.”
“Tobin?”
“Yes, it’s me. You’re safe. You’re at Stronghold. Hang on to me.” She kept up the soothing words as they made their slow way into the castle. The coolness within revived Sioned a little, and she was able to support herself as Tobin helped her up the stairs.
“Where’s Rohan?”
“Gone to join Ostvel and the other troops come from Remagev.” She hoped so, at any rate, but there was no use worrying about that now.
Sioned nodded slowly. “I told him Maeta’s plan. Fool. He’ll want to lead the battle.”
“We’re, almost there. Just down this hallway and then you can rest.”
Tobin got her onto the great bed and stripped the torn clothes from her. The shirt had once been a beautiful garment, made of fine material and laced through with tiny violet ribbons. The color made Tobin’s jaw clench. Drawing a basin of water from the next room, she took up a soft towel and began washing Sioned’s feet.
“We had to walk, you see,” the younger woman said, her voice clear and colorless. “The dragons bolted the horses that first day. We couldn’t stop at Skybowl. The Merida left men there to watch for us. Oh, Tobin, that feels so good. Thank you.”
She ripped a pillowcase into strips and bound Sioned’s blistered feet. “Hush now. You just rest.”
“I wonder if I killed any of them with Fire,” Sioned went on in that strange voice. “Andrade would not approve. But it wouldn’t be the first time—or the last.” She stared up at Tobin, her green eyes hazy. “I’m a faradhi and a princess. What else did she expect of me?”
“She’s ordered the Sunrunners to support us against Roelstra.”
A thin smile curved the cracked lips. “Tobin, she did that the instant she ordered me to come to Stronghold.”
Tobin finished washing her. Later she would salve that burned, parched skin, wrap her in sheets soaked with herbs. But at this moment sleep was more important. She stroked back tangled red hair and placed a tender kiss on Sioned’s forehead. “Sleep now, my dear. You’re home.”
“Tobin. . . .” Her voice was dreamy, her eyelids drifting closed. “You must tell everyone . . . there’s going to be a son.”
The Merida, galloping back down the canyon, ran smack into the middle of another battle. Ostvel’s forces had come from Remagev, marching all night after riders hidden in the hills around Stronghold had reported the Merida arrival. Ostvel’s force fanned out into a half-circle and was engaged in closing it tight when Rohan and a few others who’d jumped on Merida horses rode into view. The sight of the prince brought two groups from either side of the arc to join in a rear assault. By noonday it was over.
The ten who were still in their saddles were relieved of their horses and armor, but not their lives. Rohan sat his horse with his borrowed sword across his thighs, watch- ing the ten Merida haul their dead and wounded into the sand. He was sick with exhaustion and the battle just concluded, and he had no idea what was keeping him upright. But upright he stayed, with Ostvel silently at his side. When all the Merida had been accounted for, Rohan had the survivors line up before him.
“I will spare your lives,” he told them. “For I have a message for you to deliver. It requires that you sever the right hand of each of your comrades—dead or not.”
Ostvel caught his breath. Rohan cared not at all. When the grisly task was accomplished and the dying had been given a swift knife to the heart, he ordered the hands placed in saddlebags, one for each soldier still alive.
“These you will carry north to your masters. You—“ He pointed his sword at the man wearing the finest clothing. “A captain of some sort? I thought so. You will have the privilege of going south, not north. You will deliver that as a gift from me to High Prince Roelstra and inform him of what occurred here. Be sure to impress upon him that it will not be his hand I will deprive him of when next we meet, but his head.” He paused, then finished mildly. “I suggest you leave Skybowl alone, incidentally. Before you reach it on foot, my troops will have slaughtered your compatriots there.”
“On foot!” the captain burst out. “But we’ve no water!”
Rohan gave him a quiet smile. “Neither had I and my lady wife during the days we walked here from Feruche. You have the longer path to tread, my friend. Start now, before I change my mind and have alt of you killed where you stand.”
He turned his horse and rode back up to Stronghold, dismounting in the inner courtyard. No one dared approach him. As he climbed slowly to his chambers, he met his sister hurrying down. She was limping, and there was a bandage wrapped around her thigh, and through his monumental fatigue he felt a pang of concern.
“Rohan! Is it true?” She grasped his bare arm, the coolness of her fingers on his sun-blistered skin acutely painful.
“Not now, Tobin.” He pulled away from her and continued climbing.
“Answer me! Is it true you’re to have a child?”
He stopped dead.
“Rohan! She told me you were going to have a son! Is it true?”
“She told you that, did she?” He turned and looked into his sister’s black eyes, heard the bitter hollowness of his voice as he replied, “Yes. It’s true. I’m going to have a son.”
He walked away from her bewilderment and closed the door of his chambers behind him. He stood for a long time beside the bed, gazing down at his wife. They lived, as he had promised. He had not been raised in the Desert for nothing. Such food and moisture as the sand and cliffs provided, they had partaken ‘of, and survived.
He traced the fine lines of her gaunt face that was so oddly at peace. Suffering aged most people, but Sioned’s face was a miracle of childlike purity as she slept, lips curved in a tiny smile, the fine sweet bones in sharp relief.
He had promised her life. She had promised him a son. Could she hold lanthe’s bastard to her breast, even considering that she could wrest him from his mother in the first place? And could he ever look at the child and not see the woman who had borne him?
If Sioned could, then he must. Goddess help him.
He lay beside her, staring at the high ceiling painted blue to match Desert skies. It was a vague surprise to find there was still water enough in his body for tears.
Tobin and Ostvel found them like that at dusk, sleeping. She had come to tend their hurts, he to bring them food. They exchanged glances and the princess spoke.
“She said nothing about a child to you before she left?”
“Nothing. Do you think I would have let her go?” He shook his head. “And do I really think anyone could have stopped her? But why did lanthe release them?”
“Perhaps they escaped.”
“From Feruche? The only way to leave is to be allowed to leave.”
They watched the pair for a time: Sioned peaceful in sleep, Rohan haggard. Tobin saw that youth had fled her brother’s face, and mourned its loss.
“Doubtless we’ll learn as much of it as they care to tell,” she said.
“Doubtless,” Ostvel agreed. “We’d better let them sleep.”