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There were none but fighting men in the great hall of Castle Dravan. The council was not needed; and now Cadaric and three subcaptains of archers sat at the table among the knights and bheromen.
They all stood respectfully when Tylara entered. If the bheromen resented her archers sitting as equals to armored knights, they kept that to themselves. Their lady had shown how sharp her tongue could be during the few weeks that she’d been with them—and they had seen what those shafts could do. They waited until she was seated at the head of the table. Then all began to speak at once.
“Hold! Silence!” Bheroman Trakon pounded the table with a dagger hilt. “That’s better.” He smiled at her. “My lady.”
She nodded her thanks. Trakon had been most attentive lately. His wife had died of the plague ten months ago. He was twice her age—but only that, and handsome enough. Certainly she could not remain a virgin ruler of this county forever. She would never find another like Lamil, and Trakon would do as well as another when her mourning period ended. But so soon, so soon—
“They come, Lady,” Captain Camithon said. “Two days’ march to the north.”
“Two days if they’re lucky,” Trakon said. “They’re so swollen with plunder, they’re lucky to march two thousand paces an hour.”
“But all of them?” Tylara asked.
“Aye, Lady,” Cadaric said. He glared at the others, ready to resent any objection that a mere Tamaerthon archer would speak. But there was only silence. Trakon, Cadaric, and Camithon had seen the advancing enemy, and the others had not. “I counted five hundred banners in their vanguard alone.”
“You scouted the land well?” Tylara asked.
“Aye, Lady,” Cadaric said. “It’s more than suitable. We could blunt them, aye and blood them as well, and not lose a handful were it done well.”
More babble. Trakon pounded for order again. One of the knights shouted. “Blunt them? What madness is this?”
Tylara noted Trakon’s grim smile. He had not been too proud to listen to Cadaric as they rode back from scouting. A good man, she thought.
“The passes are narrow,” Tylara said. “The maps remind me of my home. In narrow passes one man is the worth of ten—”
“Narrow they are, but not that narrow,” Captain Camithon said. He sounded hurt. Strategy was a matter for professionals, not for girls hardly old enough to bed lawfully. “Do we stand in the passes with our hundred lances, we would blood Sarakos, aye, but then his strength would ride over us. Then who would there be to defend Dravan?”
Trakon’s grin widened. “Our lady does not propose a stand,” he said.
“Then what in the twelfth name of Yatar are we talking about?” Camithon demanded.
Cadaric grinned. “It is plain that you in the west have not heard the tales of how Tamaerthon won freedom from Ta-Hakos and the other greedy ones about us,” he said. “I propose to have a ballad sung for you. With my lady’s permission?”
Tylara nodded, and before there could be any protest one of the younger archers began to sing.
There were mutterings at first, but the boy’s voice was good. They listened in silence, not trying to hide their astonishment at this intrusion in a council of war. As the song went on, Camithon leaned forward eagerly and Bheroman Trakon began to grin broadly. Before the ballad ended, the knights and captains were huddled over the map. For the first time in weeks, there were shouts of laughter in the great hall.
* * *
Tylara sat astride her horse. This in itself was shocking enough; but worse, she rode no gentle mare but a great stallion—a war-horse any knight would be proud to own. She sat atop a small knoll, surrounded by a dozen men-at-arms and as many archers.
This was the price she paid for coming herself to the battle. She had never got her people to agree to that—but she’d come anyway, and no one dared lay hands on her. One soldier, ordered by Trakon to seize her bridle and lead her back inside Castle Dravan, would bear the welt from her riding crop for weeks. She must see at least one blow struck against the man who had killed her husband.
Below were not only all her fighting men, but hundreds of peasants with brush hooks and axes. They were using these to cut the low scraggly wax-stalks from the hillside and carry them into the pass. For five hundred paces from the top of the pass to where it widened below, the narrow road was carpeted with the newly cut brush. More was piled high to either side.
Bheromen and knights and men-at-arms waited where the pass widened a hundred paces beyond the last brushpile. The armored knights sat on the ground, giving their mounts ease until they would be needed. A few polished mail and plate. Others threw dice.
About half the knights were mounted on horses. The others rode centaurs; not as reliable as horses, harder to tame, and more likely to bolt when threatened. Horses were far superior, but they were more costly. They had to be fed cultivated grains and hay; they could not live by grazing.
Priestly legend said that horses, like men, were brought to this place by evil gods. This did not seem reasonable, but like the other tales of ships in the sky, the story was universal. “Why else,” the priests said, “must we labor so hard to eat, if the Dayfather intended us to live here?” They said that the stars were suns, and the wanderers other worlds, one of which was the true home of men. Whether or not the stories were true, men were more comfortable with horses than with centaurs, and she wished that more of her knights rode them.
Between the top of the pass and the broader area where her knights waited, the pass was quite narrow—no more than a hundred paces wide at one point. The hills rose steeply on either side. One of the peasants went up into that area with his brush hook. Before he could cut any of the upthrust stalks, a dozen voices halted him.
“Not here, you Dayfather-damned fool!” A guild journeyman ran up to show the brushcutter the proper place. It was important that there be no signs of activity on the hill above the narrow pass—
A horseman clattered over the top of the ridge. He drew his sword and waved it vigorously. “Enemy in sight,” an officer muttered. Tylara nodded.
The knights and men-at-arms climbed to their feet, clumsy in their armor, and helped each other mount. This took time. The armor was heavy, and centaurs resented heavy burdens; although a few were so well trained that they assisted their riders. Before all were mounted, Tylara, from her vantage point, saw the leading elements of Sarakos’ army.
The Wanax had deployed well. There were only fighting men in the van, and when the pass began to narrow, they fell into column in good order, not pushing each other or crowding together. Horsemen led; then a group mounted on centaurs; then more horsemen. They climbed the twisting road into the pass twenty abreast—a long column—lances high with banners fluttering in the chill morning wind.
The group behind was not so orderly. Carts drawn by mules and arrocks, crossbowmen mingled with spearmen, camp followers, cooks, prostitutes, and priests all mixed together.
A trumpet sounded, and Camithon’s heavy cavalrymen trotted forward over the piled brush toward the top of the pass. They raised their banners. The brushcutters scrambled away behind them, down and onto the road, running back to Dravan, raising a thin cloud of dust as they ran.
Another trumpet sounded from the leaders of Sarakos’ army, and the column halted. The group behind became even more disorganized as the marching horde piled onto one another. Trailing elements caught up and mingled with the leaders. Pity, Tylara thought. If the knights could get among that press for ten minutes, Wanax Sarakos would feel the losses. But the lead group was not disorganized, and it outnumbered her entire army.
Once again she felt doubts and fear, and she looked up into the vault of reddish-blue sky above, searching for a sign. But there was none. A cloudless cold day in the mountains; rare enough, the Dayfather showing himself in all his glory—but he showed no signs of favor. Would he care? Or would the ancient One-eye govern the day, choosing the most valiant to be slain, sending victory by whim?
There were more trumpets from Sarakos’ column, and the vanguard knights spread across forty abreast. They moved forward at a walk, then at a trot. The lines rippled as lances fell into place, and the trumpet sounded once more. The trot became a canter as the charge swept forward.
“Now,” Tylara prayed. “Now. In Yatar’s name, NOW!”
Her own trumpets sounded. Her knights wheeled, and spurred their mounts ahead, trotting down the road toward Dravan, riding after the dust cloud raised by the retreating woodcutters.
Tylara muttered thanks to the Dayfather. That had been the first of the many things that could go wrong. If the knights would not run, if the sight of the enemy had brought them to a hopeless charge because it would be dishonorable to run—more than one battle had been lost through blind obedience to the dictates of a cavalier’s honor. As this one might yet be.
“They flee! The cowards run!” The shouts rose from Sarakos’ charging knights.
As her own knights rode away, there were tiny movements in the brush at the roadsides. Men hidden in holes beneath the brush thrust torches upward, then fled toward the sides of the pass. Thin wisps of smoke rose, here and there a flame. The waxy stalks caught fire quickly.
Her knights reached the wide place where they had waited earlier. They wheeled as one, facing the enemy. Their lances came down.
“The cowards hide behind fire!” someone shouted. “We will teach them!” The charging enemy came on harder, a hundred paces into the brush. Two hundred, and still they rode. Tylara held her breath.
When the leading elements were three hundred paces into the brush-strewn pass, a hundred paces beyond the top of the pass, her own trumpets sounded. There was a flash of movement on the hillsides above the pass. Bright kilts, dull leather, the dull shine of steel caps painted with earth colors. A moment before there wasn’t a man to be seen. Now almost two hundred archers were standing behind shrubs, behind rocks, seemingly having risen from the very ground. They raised their bows, nocked arrows, and drew back to cheek and eye.
There were shouts from Sarakos’ troops, but it was obvious to even the most stupid that there was no halting the charge. Safety lay ahead, through the screen of knights, out of the growing fire and away from the archers. The leading horsemen spurred harder.
Another pause. Then a shout from the hillside. “Let the grey gulls fly!”
The arrows flew with a deadly sound. In a moment the air was thick with them. Even as the first flight struck, another was on its way. Shafts the length of a tall man’s arm and tipped with steel sped from bows drawn by men who’d used them since childhood. The second flight struck, and another arched out.
The slaughter was terrifying. The arrows pierced horses, saddles, even armor itself. Horses reared and bolted, crashed into each other, tripped and fell and stumbled over fallen horses. The centaurs screamed in rage and pain, their stubby arms flailing wildly, their half-hands frantically plucking at the arrows, their heads twisted to lick wounds. They seized their riders and tried to throw them off, or fell into the brush and rolled on their backs. Some plunged uphill off the road, to be shot down before they could climb far.
Still the arrows flew. The charge was broken into scattered groups, driblets of twos and threes and fours; not a solid wave of armored men with lances, but a disorganized horde fleeing past the archers, away from the growing fires, out into the broad area beyond—
To be struck by the countercharge of Tylara’s knights. With a hundred paces to build momentum they struck the leading elements of Sarakos’ forces, driving their enemy back toward the flames and the falling arrows, then wheeling away as yet another wave charged through to strike and turn. They too wheeled and joined their fellows; halted and dismounted.
Dismounted. One-eye Vothan had smiled on her, had not maddened her knights as he so easily might have done. They had obeyed orders. Most western knights wouldn’t fight dismounted; the Eqetas of Chelm had trained these well.
They stood with leveled lances, poised just beyond the burning brushwood, an impenetrable wall on which Sarakos’ men could break themselves again and again, but never get through. They could not have withstood a mounted charge by an organized group, but there was no danger of that. Sarakos’ force milled about in the smoke and flame, galled by the ceaseless shower of arrows, held by the fire and the bodies of their own comrades. The dismounted line was more than able to kill the few who rode out of the smoke.
A brisk wind came up to whip the flames. They grew and flamed higher, until for five hundred paces the pass looked like the very Pit—a tangle of smoke and fire, shouting men, men unhorsed, dying horses, riderless centaurs maddened by fire and plunging into everyone. And through it all the Tamaerthon gulls flew with their deadly bite, flight after flight of the grey shafts.
The Sarakos trumpets sounded a frantic retreat, but for far too many there was no retreat possible.
The arrows did not come in flights now. The archers picked single targets, concentrating on men still mounted, bringing down their mounts to leave the armored men helpless in the burning brushwood. The pass filled with sounds of pain and terror.
Tylara sat her horse grimly, her mouth set in a hard line. I thought I would enjoy it, she thought. These are the men who killed my husband. I should enjoy their agony.
But she felt no joy at all, only sickness and horror which she must hide from her shouting escort, and the numbing realization that this was only the beginning. There would be far more, weeks more.
I hadn’t known the horses would scream so, she thought. I expected to see men die, but I had not thought of the horses.
She continued to watch in sick fascination until she suddenly realized what she was doing. She had almost made a fatal mistake.
Sarakos was bringing up his own archers. Most were cross-bowmen, or mounted archers with short bows they drew only to the chest; none were a match for her Tamaerthon clansmen, but two hundred cannot fight a thousand. It was time to go. She raised her hand and waved vigorously.
Her trumpets sounded in the pass. Cadaric waved acknowledgement and began sending his archers out; the forward ones first, then others, leapfrogging so that they kept a continuous fire onto the Sarakos troops piled up at the edge of the brushfire.
Another trumpet call. Nothing happened. Her knights stood at the pass. A few left the line, but they went only for their mounts, and when they were mounted they came back.
“Fools!” Tylara shouted. She spurred her horse down the knoll to where the knights and bheromen of Chelm stood. More mounted as she came, but they showed no signs of leaving.
“Ride!” she shouted. “Before the fires burn down and their whole army comes through! Ride, my lords. You’ve done well. One-eye Vothan smiles on you. Sarakos will not soon forget this day. Now, in the name of the Dayfather, ride!”
Bheroman Trakon sat motionless. “The fire protects them no less than us. There was nothing behind their vanguard but foot. We have more work to do this day.”
“Not true,” Tylara shouted. “They were bringing up their horse archers even as I watched, and they have their crossbowmen. You will ride into their volleys, and the remnant will be charged by their cavalry.”
Trakon didn’t move.
“My lord,” Tylara said. She tried to control the panic in her voice. “If you mean to die here today, I will stand with you. It will be no victory no matter how many we destroy, for we will have given Dravan to Sarakos. If we are caught here, anywhere but within the walls, we are finished.
“I would rather be killed with my husband’s knights than ride to Dravan and live to see it fall to Sarakos. Is that your will?”
Trakon sat motionless for a moment, then shook his head as if to clear it of the morning fog. “You speak well, Lady. We have won no victory if we stay to be killed.” He rose in his stirrups to shout orders. “Carry the dead and wounded away. Leave nothing for Sarakos. Let him believe that he has lost the quarter of his vanguard to ghosts, to achieve nothing.” He turned and rode down the pass. After a moment, Tylara followed.
I follow, she thought. It was my victory, but I follow. She sighed, knowing what would be thought by everyone who saw.
* * *
A week later, Sarakos reached Castle Dravan. The first attempt to storm the castle was repulsed; attack and defense might have been the opening steps in a ritual dance. The next move was also set; Sarakos dug in and erected pavilions and defenses around the castle.
There was no entry or exit from Dravan. Sarakos and his army waited for their siege train.