“After that nightmare of a journey here from Castle Crag, don’t you tell me what I can or can’t do. Come on.”
Mounted troops rode out of the stables in groups of three and four, harness muffled by rags. Archers slipped silently down the valley in slightly larger groups and disappeared up the vine-planted slopes into the woods. Ostvel, a black Radzyn stallion under him and a stiff drink inside him, cantered out of the stables last along with Donato and Jofra. Chandar had gone on ahead with Laroshin, the guards commander, to organize things.
Will it work? Ostvel kept asking himself. He couldn’t trust Andry to defend Dragon’s Rest—didn’t think he could. He had witnessed Sioned’s weaving that had protected Rohan from treachery years ago, during the battle with Roelstra. With her at Skybowl, he had watched as Tobin and even the newborn Pol, barely Named that very night, were helplessly caught in Sioned’s working. At the field of battle, Andrade and Urival and Pandsala had been used, too, as Sioned grasped at all the power she could reach. But hers had been an act of desperation, an instinctive creation of starlight to raise a dome around the combatants.
Andry had no such stake in protecting Dragon’s Rest. A defeat for Pol would be a vast satisfaction to him, especially after his humiliation over the right to judge the Sunrunner in Gilad. What motive could he possibly have for keeping this great symbol of Pol’s power and prestige safe?
By the time the riders had assembled at the hillside guardhouse, word came that the archers were well on their way to their assigned posts. As Donato dismounted, the last moonlight transfixed him.
Eighty men and women watched wide-eyed as the Sunrunner was caught in a powerful weaving. Ostvel feared it might be Andry again, but when Donato returned to them, he was smiling.
“The High Princess relays word from the High Prince. He approves our plan, but has a refinement of his own to add if we think it wise.”
“Anything,” Laroshin grunted. “In fact, I wish he was here!”
“So does he, to hear her grace tell it. But we have his orders, if not his sword.”
Rohan’s suggestion was that the archers attack from the rear, driving the invaders up through the narrows in as much confusion as they could cause. As they burst into the valley, they could be pounced on from either side and slaughtered, with no retreat possible.
The commander chewed his mustache and nodded. “His grace knows tactics.”
“He’s had experience in war that he never wanted,” Ostvel said.
“But here’s the best part,” Donato went on. “Not just arrows but Fire will chase them forward. Sunrunner’s Fire.”
Ostvel looked at him worriedly. “Are you up to it? It’s been a hellish trip and you’ve been using yourself up tonight at speed.”
“Are you saying I can’t manage to place a bit of Fire where it’ll do the most good? I’m not old and feeble yet!”
“Sorry.” Ostvel grinned suddenly. “Jofra, escort our lord Sunrunner here to a suitable spot for Fire-raising.”
When they were gone, Laroshin surveyed his troops. “It’ll take a while. Well after moonset, I’d say. Let’s divide up now and make ready for the flood. But if Prince Halian’s nails are so much as scuffed, I’ll have the culprit strung up by the short hairs. His grace has quite a few things to answer for and I want him in shape to do so.” He glanced at Ostvel. “Agreed, my lord?”
“Agreed.” Ostvel glanced around as a squire came up and offered him a sword. He shook his head. “I’ll stay to the rear, if you don’t mind. I was never much good with a sword.”
“That’s not what I hear,” the commander said. “All of us know about the battle for Stronghold.”
“That was many years ago.”
Laroshin grinned at him. “How old is your younger son? Not quite two?”
Ostvel couldn’t help laughing. “Success with that sword has nothing to do with this kind!”
“It’s my experience that a man who wields the one with excellent results isn’t too old to use the other.”
“Well, if you put it that way. ...” He accepted the fine blade, tested its weight and balance, and nodded his satisfaction. The exchange was a useful antidote to nerves among the soldiers; Ostvel had played along for just that reason. It was suicidal, really, pitting eighty mounted troops, the same number of archers, and Sunrunner’s Fire against an army of many hundreds. But surprise was a useful weapon, too. He hoped the Goddess would be interested enough, amused enough, or impressed enough by this crazy undertaking to lend her considerable support.
When the moons vanished over the hills, everything was in readiness. Ostvel looked up at the stars, remembering once again the night after Pol’s birth. Kneeling on the lip of Skybowl’s crater on a night of no moons, listening to Sioned Name the child after the stars themselves. Watching the infant’s face as she wove his raw strength into the starlight and flung it hundreds of measures away to where Rohan battled Roelstra. Holding the terrified baby in his arms after the work was done. Realizing only then what he and she and Tobin had done by taking this child of Rohan’s body and Ianthe’s—and trying not to think about the moment when he’d plunged his sword into Ianthe’s breast.
Someday Pol would find out. Ostvel had argued for revealing the truth while he was still young enough to be flexible, to understand in a child’s terms: “We wanted you and loved you too much to let her keep you from us.” But it was too late for the simple love that would have eased a little boy’s understanding and acceptance. Pol was a grown man now. The reassurance of being loved and wanted more by Rohan and Sioned than by Ianthe would not be enough. He would see politics and power, be shocked by the years of deceit, feel betrayed unto his soul.
He should have been told long ago. But somehow Ostvel could not help wishing that his own part would never be discovered. Pol would eventually forgive his parents and Tobin. Ostvel doubted he would forgive his mother’s executioner.
A murmuring among the waiting troops took him gratefully from his thoughts. He looked toward the narrows and concentrated. There—a faint yellowish glow, the distinctive pale gold of Sunrunner’s Fire.
“Ha! There it is! Too early and the wrong direction for sunup,” Laroshin whispered smugly.
Ostvel nodded, watching in fascination as the radiance slowly intensified. And there were sounds now, shouts barely heard on the night breeze, distant hoofbeats. He shifted his grip on the sword and told himself that young son or no young son, his thrust with this kind of blade wasn’t what it had been. He would be fifty-five this summer, not twenty. He’d keep well to the rear of the battle, knowing that Alasen would skin him alive if he came home with so much as a scratch. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if he didn’t come home at all.
Stampeding horses and mountain ponies had entered the narrows; the thunder of their passing echoed off the rock walls. Ostvel jumped as the swiftest burst into the valley and his Radzyn stallion snorted at this invasion of his home turf. Laroshin signaled his soldiers to hold. They’d wait until the army itself came running through, chased by Fire and arrows. But it was a long, tense wait and Ostvel felt the muscles knotting in his shoulders.
The runaway horses galloped past. They probably wouldn’t stop until they reached the lake at the top of the valley. As their hoofbeats pounded into the distance, there was a period of almost-quiet, punctuated by the cries of arrow-shot men and women. From the echo, they, too, had reached the narrows.
“Hold, hold,” Laroshin breathed. “Wait till they’re in position.”
The first enemy troops staggered into the valley, followed by scores of others as arrows and Fire pushed them into the trap.
“Hold,” came the low-voiced order. “Not long now. Look at that, we can herd them like stray lambs!”
“I never saw a lamb that brought its own sword along to the slaughter,” Chandar muttered.