Crown of Vengeance

“We are, my lord,” Iardalaith answered.

“Then let us begin.”

There was a flare of brightness as the Warhunt cast Shield just within the fortress walls. The walls ran for a league in each direction. Twelve cubits high, three cubits thick.

The Warhunt turned them to water.

The spell that had made them was powerful. The one to unmake them was more powerful still. It seemed to Vieliessar that she could hear Janglanipaikharain cry out in protest, and she knew the Flower Forest did not have much more to give. For an instant, the dark stone stood solid. Then suddenly it was clear, a crystalline battlement glittering in the light of Shield.

Then it fell, water crashing and spreading across the gutted frozen surface of Ifjalasairaet, a great wave that rolled outward toward the enemy. It spread and slowed, until the whole expanse between Vieliessar’s army and the Alliance camp sparkled like a vast mirror.

“Drop the Shield,” she said, more calmly than she felt. “Sound the call to battle.”

* * *

Caerthalien held the enemy center. Both Rithdeliel and Gunedwaen thought a few of the War Princes would ride with their meisnes today, but not the Houses of the Old Alliance. So it was Prince Runacarendalur of Caerthalien who sat beneath Caerthalien’s war banner. Irony indeed if hers was the sword that killed him. Perhaps the power of Amrethion’s Prophecy would save her life when he fell.

The enemy line was twice the length of her own. The Alliance meant its komen to sweep around her, encircling her force and driving her tuathal and deosil wings over her archers and infantry. Her strategy required them to do the opposite—she needed to trap the whole of the Alliance force within her own, pulling them away from their reserve units. That was one reason among many she’d chosen to give up the momentary advantage of meeting them in the charge.

She took a deep breath as the signal to attack was sounded. Vieliessar felt the maddening itch of Light wash over her skin as the enemy Lightborn fought to strike at them and the Warhunt opposed them. It was as much a test of strength as anything else, for Janglanipaikharain was still a reservoir of Light, not Sealed to either side, and so superiority in the duel of Lightborn would come from tactics, not raw power. No commander can ride two horses at once, Rithdeliel had told her over and over when he moved from training her as a knight to training her as a general of armies to come. She banished the Lightborn from her mind. She must trust Iardalaith to do all she would do herself—and more.

The enemy moved forward at a walk for a few moments, opening out the lines of close-packed destriers. Then a second signal came; the enemy moved to the trot, and the ground began to shake with the hammer of steel-shod hooves. She counted heartbeats as the first ranks moved to the gallop, pulling those behind with them as fluidly as if they were pearls on the same strand.

Now that the Alliance komen were committed Vieliessar’s pikes and archers began to walk forward as unhesitatingly as if they did not walk into Death’s embrace. The archers began loosing arrows as soon as the enemy was in range, and horses and riders began to fall. The enemy line shifted, folded, re-formed into column. Then the flying column of Alliance komen struck her pikes. A full third of her infantry went down under the force of the impact.

She hated the thought of riding over her own wounded. She had no choice. She flourished her sword and urged Snapdragon forward. On her tuathal hand, Rithdeliel’s force spurred their mounts forward, the wolf-howl of Farcarinon bursting from every throat. The wild ululation made her hackles rise and she found herself echoing a war cry that had not been heard since the day Serenthon Farcarinon fell in battle.

Battle was joined.

Her sword seemed weightless in her hands. She feinted at a neck then struck at a shoulder.

“To make armor flexible, it must also be weak. Here are the places to strike an armored knight.”

The breastplate could not be easily pierced. Backplates were lighter and covered only the upper back, for the Code of Battle forbade an attack from behind. Belly was protected by thin bands of metal. The underside of the upper arm was protected only by chain. The inner elbow was unarmored. The arm from elbow to wrist was shielded by a light vambrace, the hand and fingers by a studded leather glove.

The destriers rarely wore armor.

An Aramenthiali warhorse reared to attack. Her sword bit deep into its throat. As it fell, its rider’s head went back. She struck at the exposed jaw. Blood gushed. Snapdragon spun away.

She shifted her weight in the saddle without thought—heel here, knee there, sit back, sit forward—and Snapdragon turned and whirled and lunged in a deadly dance, striking what she could not reach, adding his force to her blows, shielding her from danger.

“Your destrier is your most important weapon on the field. Learn what he can teach you, and teach him well.”

Caerthalien gold-and-green, Aramenthiali blue-and-gold, mixed with green-and-silver as the enemy column plunged deep into her line. Now the archers would retreat. Now the waiting wings would ride to flank. The events of the first moments of battle—what should be, for she could not see what was—ticked through her mind like the drops of water that had measured out her days in the Sanctuary of the Star. An enemy struck at her arm; she dropped her shoulder and the blade rang off her gorget and bounced away.

Turn and strike. Strike and live.

She had not ridden to battle with a standard-bearer beside her, but her green helm was banded in moonsilver, a coronet of Vilya blossoms inlaid into the lacquer. Symbol of rule, dominion, kingship. It drew the enemy to her as if she had bespelled them.

Nadalforo forced her mount forward on Vieliessar’s tuathal side, caught a descending blow on her bracer, then struck across her saddle in a spearing motion. Her blade slid between the plates of belly armor, thrusting the knight from his saddle. Her mount lunged forward. Vieliessar spurred Snapdragon through the sudden opening.

She had never seen, never fought, a battle as Arilcarion would have them fought—a thing of lines of retreat, negotiated abeyances, battlefields with unassailable bounds and safe places to rest an exhausted mount or change to a fresh one. The summer wars of the Hundred Houses were hedged about by a thousand rules. This was no summer war. It was a battle fought without quarter, without surrender. Any warrior who rode alone from the press of battle was hunted and slain like a deer in the spring.

The sun climbed higher in the sky. The field shifted as the ground became clogged with dead. Tailles and grand-tailles fought free of the carnage only to regroup and attack again. The screams of the wounded and dying blended with the hammering of sword on sword, sword on armor, the blurt of warhorns relaying unheeded signals, the skirl of signal whistles, a hundred shouted battle cries. Her body ached with the battering of sound, her flesh was numb beneath the shocks of a thousand blows. There were no landmarks here except for the cliff, and she could not raise her eyes from the battle to see if it was behind her, before her, to her left or right. There was only the enemy, and surcoats ripped away or stained with blood. She fought toward each half-glimpsed battle standard.

“To slay a battle captain is to slay twelve komen; a taille looks to its captain for direction.”

She did not see Caerthalien’s banners.

Her sword arm ached. Snapdragon’s neck was covered with foam. Riderless destriers plunged wildly through the melee seeking escape, or stood over their fallen riders until they too were slain. The moments of the battle unfolded in a thousand disjointed images. Here a warrior dragging an enemy from his destrier’s back and throwing himself into the vacant saddle as his own dying mount went to its knees. There—impossibly—one of her infantry still fighting, covered in blood, a blacksmith’s sledge in each hand. A Lightborn on a palfrey, armored only with a violet shimmer of Shield, her hands filled with hunting spears. A komen fighting afoot, standing in a ring of dead.

The air sizzled and crackled with Magery. She saw a string of sun-bright flashes and knew someone had Called Thunderbolt. She didn’t know which side or where it struck. Her mouth tasted of blood and metal. Her throat ached with thirst. The Alliance Lightborn lashed the frozen, hoof-churned, bloodstained plain with flame, raised