"Father! You all right?"
"I'll make it." He was an ambulatory blood clot. A lot was his. "What's happening?"
"Covering the evacuation."
"What? Bring in...."
"Too late. Southtown's lost. You're about the last we'll save. They ran two tunnels under the river. They've closed the bridge twice. We reopened it, and closed one tunnel."
"Drown the sons of bitches." He turned. Southtown was burning. Fighting was waning. A ragged band of Trolledyngjans hurried their way, grim of visage. They had been stunned by their enemies. No soldiers should be that good.
"Save what you can. Don't let them take the Barbican." He started for the city. Two soldiers helped. He had lost a lot of blood.
He paused at the bridge's center. The Silverbind was alive with warships, each loaded with Marines. "What now?"
It was the first thing Haaken explained. "They've launched a fleet from Portsmouth, across the Estuary."
"Damn. That bastard don't miss a shot."
Ragnarson quickly counterattacked through the underriver tunnels. Zindahjira and Visigodred spearheaded. Badalamen's assault on the Barbican petered out.
"Your spook-pushers are whipping theirs," observed Lord Hartteoben, recently appointed Itaskian Chief of Staff. "That Unborn.... It won't let the Tervola direct their legions."
"We've got to hurt them while we can," Ragnarson averred. His wounds were worse than he would admit. Willpower couldn't keep him going. He collapsed.
Blackfang took charge, stubbornly pursued prepared plans.
The woman wore black. He couldn't see her clearly. She seemed ill-defined, haloed.
"Death," he sighed as she bent. The Dark Lady bringing her fatal kiss.
Her lips moved. "Marshall?" It tumbled down a long, cold tunnel littered with the bones of heroes.
The equalizer, the great leveler, had turned her gaze his way at last. The last narrow escape lay behind him, not ahead....
She wiped his face with a cold, wet cloth.
He saw more clearly.
This was no Angel of Death. She wore the habit of a lay helper of the Sisters of Mercy. The halo came of window light teasing through wild golden hair.
She had to be the daughter of an Itaskian nobleman. No common woman had the resources to so faithfully maintain her youth, to dress richly even in nursing habit.
He guessed her to be thirty.... Then realized he was nude, and tendering a half-hearted male salute.
"The battle...." he babbled. "How long have I?"
"Four days." Her glance flicked downward, amused. "The fighting continues. Your Blackfang is too stubborn to lose." She bathed him, enjoying his embarrassment.
"The situation, woman, the situation," he demanded weakly.
She bubbled. "Admiral Stonecipher caught their fleet two days ago. They were seasick. He forced them onto the rocks at Cape Blood. The Coast Watch finished them. A historic victory, Father says. Greater than the Battle of the Isles."
"Ah." He smiled. "That'll warm Badalamen's heart." The fleet from Portsmouth had counted every seaworthy vessel captured along the western littoral. Tens of thousands of easterners must have drowned. "What about Southtown?"
She pushed him down. He was too weak to resist.
"The enemy who crossed over are cut off in Wharf Street South, west of the Bridge...."
"Crossed? To the city?" He tried to rise.
She pushed. "Father says it's still bloody in Southtown, but going our way. When Lord Harteobben attacked from the Fens...."
Bragi's head swam. He hadn't planned any operation from upriver.
"...and half the Tervola are dead. The Power went away for a while. It didn't save them." She made a sign against evil. "That thing.... The Unborn.... They say it melts their bones.... The Power is back. Really, I don't know who'll win. I just know I'm not getting much sleep. The wounded.... It's sickening. So many...."
"We're winning," he whispered, awed. "If Haaken's grabbed the initiative...."
Her fingertips brushed his stomach. Perhaps it was accidental. But Itaskian women, when their menfolks weren't looking, could be damned bold. And he was a celebrity. He had had some interesting offers, offers he wasn't emotionally ready to accept.
He was too weak this time. He drifted off cursing a missed opportunity.
There had been a change. A psyche as well as a body had begun healing.
Her name was Inger. He thought that a delicious irony. His first love had worn that name.
They had been pledged till Trolledyngjan politics had led to conflict between their parents. Inger's father had slain his. And now, so quickly, he was getting involved with a family he had fought from his arrival in Itaskia following the El Murid Wars.
She was a Greyfells, of a branch that had remained neutral in the Dukes of Greyfells's periodic assays at seizing the Itaskian throne. One of those Ragnarson himself had thwarted through the expedient of assassination. His arranging the murder had sent him flying to Kavelin....
That Duke had been Inger's father's eldest brother.
It's a bloody strange world, he thought, lying beside her, concern about the war briefly forgotten.
Possibly there was a more efficacious therapy, but neither Wachtel, Visigodred, nor Varthlokkur could name it. A week of Inger wrought miracles.
Ragnarson even stopped suffering from the wounds Mocker had dealt him. He left that hospital renewed, with plans, with a destination, a goal for after-the-war.
He had broken another resolve. Another woman had penetrated his soul.
Only Inger updated him during his convalescence. No onecame for his advice. His pride was bruised-till he heard that Varthlokkur had ordered his isolation. He had, like an athlete, been off his form. The wizard, selfishly, wanted to give him time to find himself.
Haaken managed well enough, both at battering Badalamen and cowing aspirants to supreme command. Adopting Haroun's style, he jabbed from every direction, avoiding haymakers, fading when the enemy turned to fight. In Southtown he succeeded on stubbornness, knowledge of his men, and devotion to Bragi's planning. He, like Bragi, respected the Itaskian bow. Plied from housetops, it gave him mastery of the streets. He used them as killing zones, letting Badalamen commit ever more men to Southtown's capture. He buried the pavement in corpses.
Now, Bragi saw from the Great Bridge, Southtown was so grim even the vultures shied away.
Visigodred's and Zindahjira's tunnel attacks had taken them to the heart of Shinsan's camp. They had started a few fires, then had withdrawn. The damage was more moral than physical.
'. Attacked from every direction, mundanely and magically, the Tervola were in disarray. Blittschau and Lord Harteobben harried all but the largest foraging parties. They made occasional forays against the main encampment.
The dismay of the Tervola communicated itself to the Pracchia. Badalamen argued that victory couldn't be attained in present circumstances. Soon his superior force would be leagued up in its own camp. Forcing the Great Bridge was plainly impossible. Attempts to outflank it had failed. He urged a staged retreat calculated to draw Ragnarson into the open. There, hopefully, he could be lured into pitched battle and obliterated. Magden Norath backed him.
The bent old man was impatient. He wanted the holocaust now. He demanded another try at the river. Or, if Badalamen had to move, he should take the entire army up the Silverbind, to Prost Kamenets, Dvar, and Iwa Skolovda, depriving Itaskia of her allies, returning south after fording the river's upper reaches.
The Tervola refused. They wanted to escape Varthlokkur's fury long enough to develop a counter to the Unborn. And Norath wanted to rearm with his own special weapons.
"It's good, Haaken," Ragnarson kept saying. "The only sane course."