Love and War

hisses from the woods nearby. Indeed they have no love of the cold; their blood thickens and their movements slow. But there are humans among them, and even the draconians can survive such weather, wrapped in furs they do not bother to cure or tan, and they know we have no love of the cold either.

Two days from the tower they struck a final ambush, a flurry of arrows from a stand of vallen-woods, falling harmlessly short. We could see them through the mist and the snow and the bare branches, some recognizably human, all moving like spectres or shadows. A few of our archers returned fire, their arrows falling short, too, which was what the dragon-armies wanted, their own supplies virtually endless.

One of them called out, Footmen! Listen to the voice of the dragonarmies! Melodramatic, yes, but effective across the mist and the dead land. Our bowmen ceased fire, glancing at one another nervously.

Footmen ! the man shouted again. How do you like being fodder for the knights? An old trick, spreading dissension in the ranks, and indeed some of the knights — Lord Derek, Lord Alfred, our own Sir Heros — were outraged, Heros reaching back to me for his sword, Derek preparing to charge the stand of trees, alone if necessary, Sturm and his strange companions bristling in their wet saddles, until the loud voice of Breca stilled the bravery and muttering in the column.

I expect I could explain it better over here. Perhaps you could, the dragonsoldier shouted back. But answer me this: have you ever seen a dead solamnic knight?

It was as though the eyes of the world had refocused. We knew it was a lie, a base ignoble charge, as Heros would have said, and I thought of our father returned on his shield. I thought of the centuries since the Cataclysm, of the Code, the Kingfisher, the Crown the Sword and the Rose, of the sacrifices. But all of that meant nothing after such a question, do you understand? For it was Breca's answer, not Sturm's or Hero's or Derek's, we awaited, had to await.

The smell of oil in the room. My nurse has lit a lamp so she may continue to write. Bad for the eyes, my dear. They play tricks enough as it is. We shall continue this in the morning.

TWO

It was Breca's answer we awaited, there on the road to the tower, the landscape white on white and blending into a faraway whiteness, only the thin dark lines of the trees and the shapes among them giving us any idea of distance, of measure. And the answer, though it lay nowhere within the rules set down by chivalry, not a thee or a thou or an elegant challenge, could not draw complaint from even the most strict of the knights — after all, he was not one of them, and after all, the footmen listened and applauded, their backs to the rising wind.

Every dead Solamnic Knight I've seen, Breca shouted, Had about a dozen of your lizard boys on his dance card. We find them around the bodies, all statued and pretty like a damn rock garden.

The footmen laughed, but most of the knights sat uneasily atop their uneasy horses, who pawed and snorted as though they had crossed into a country of leopards. Sturm and Lord Alfred smiled. But Sturm had traveled with outlandish folk

he had, after all, served with dwarves.

But what even Sturm and Lord Alfred knew, what most of them knew, and Breca especially, was that the dragonsoldier was not finished with Breca, that this attack was as fierce and as lethal as any with a bow or with those terrible curved swords I still see in sleep until the welcome darkness of morning comes again. For the heart of the battle was at stake before the arrows flew, before the swords clashed, at least in the eyes of the knights, who thought in terms of spirit and morale, of a high game which begins not when the first piece is taken nor even the first pawn moved, but when the players sit before the chessboard.

Breca, on the other hand, was past strategy and morale, safe for now in another world I came to witness in the weeks that followed, in the tower and in the waiting. He was a swordsman, any thrust the same as any other, to be deflected or parried if he were still to call himself a swordsman. The snow settled on his helmet until I feared that soon it would cover him, cover him entirely in the face of his enemies, and then cover all of us — on foot, on horseback, on mule-back — until what remained was a pitiful series of drifts in the country of the enemy.

And the dragonsoldier called once more out of the vallenwoods. You aren't dressed well for such bravery, footman. even from here i can see the dents in the armor. i can tell where your breastplate is crumpled and useless, where my sword would do the most damage. Your feet are probably wrapped in rags. Though the snow is too heavy to tell for certain. Yet I suppose that such is the finery that knights issue their footmen.

And they retreated into the thick boles and branches of the woods, so that they probably did not hear Breca's retort, which we heard nonetheless, which the footmen heard, which rode in my ears with its flat and furious blessing as we approached the gates of the tower:

You think we dress up to kill hogs?

Inside the tower gates, dismounting, the breathing and steam from the horses misting the air, but not as densely as the snow had misted the air outside, I remember most of all my sense of relief. Of course we were to learn of the frailties later, that in its endurance without change and restoration the tower had become indefensible, but at the time the walls seemed tall and strong, the fortress unbreachable. I would imagine, Bayard, that you have heard the stories, and that in the hearing you have imagined walls of your own, more vividly than the ones I could describe, down to the stone upon stone, to the mortar and to the tightly arranged masonry that permits no mortar, and perhaps your walls are as accurate, as real as the ones I saw, because I knew no more of fortresses and their construction than I did the songs of birds.

Now we fight from defense, I thought. Now we fight at advantage. But more than that, we fight from warmth, on the leeward side of the walls. That warmth, that comfort, was most important then, and the chambers to which Heros and I were escorted, as damp and drafty as an old attic, were a palace, were more than enough. I am spoiled now in the hospital, for there is a fire here and curtains, curtains that for all I can tell may be sackcloth, a plain burlap, but nonetheless do what curtains were intended to do in that time before we saw fit to embroider and adorn them.

If Heros had known what I was thinking, he would have said I thought like a footman. He would have been right, for they were talking when I went to tend to the horses, most of them wrapped in blankets and standing, sitting, lying around the banked fires that spangled the dark inner courtyards, a few others, the older veterans, crouched and circled around Breca, who sat upon his helmet, cupping his enormous red hands as he lit his pipe, the glow arising from the bowl spreading over his face in a light both saintly and violent.

I nodded to Breca, receiving a nod in return as he singled me out from the darkness. He had what Heros called The Ingrained Politeness To His Betters, not as common as you might imagine among footmen, but a quality all were urged to adopt and cultivate. Still, I liked to think — and DO think — this initial politeness to me was something more, stood for something. After all, he remembered the boots on the trail to the tower, and perhaps in that soldier's mind used to self-preservation and necessity, small gestures of decency counted for more than the horse and elaborate armor. Then again, he may have thought only that I was foolish, or felt sorry for me because of my youth, or he may have thought all of these things and not have been wrong in the thinking.

His face glowed above the pipe like a signal fire, or it could have been from the reflected light of his audience. For there were twenty or thirty men around him, some of them Lord Alfred's age, several nearly as young as I, but most in between — as I have said, the veterans. All of them were like children in the presence of a storyteller, but instead of awaiting the tales of high deeds and magic we heard and you still hear in the spacious courts of Solamnia, they were questioning, all questions amounting to one: what chance do we have to hold this fort?

Nor did he coddle them, assure them, as the storytellers do at Mother's — so it is elves you want, young master? Then you shall hear of elves. None of that for footmen. Breca was honest, or pretended honesty in a way that came closer to the truth than simple honesty, which sometimes allows for dishonest imaginings.