Crown of Vengeance

her feet, handing her cup to Carangil. “My horse,” she said.

Carangil led the destrier over and assisted Ladyholder Glorthiachiel to mount. It was undoubtedly just as well, Runacarendalur thought, that Carangil Lightbrother was able to bespell the animal to docility. He didn’t doubt his mother’s ability to browbeat any living thing into submission, but the need to do so wouldn’t sweeten her temper.

Not that anything would at this point.

“You said you would bring back her head,” Ladyholder Glorthiachiel said, in an undertone sharp enough to etch steel. “You said the Household knights would be sufficient to rout Oronviel’s meisne and a pack of lowborn mercenaries.”

I did not know I would be facing the daughter of Serenthon Farcarinon, Runacarendalur thought. He walked beside Ladyholder Glorthiachiel’s mount, leading Gwaenor. All around them, the remains of Caerthalien’s Household knights moved westward, more a disordered throng of refugees rather than an army. Some knights led exhausted destriers. Others rode. There were no horses or wagons for the servants, the Lightborn, or the arming pages. Some of the servants walked beside their masters. Some simply stood and wept as the column slowly formed and began to move—unable to believe any of this was happening, unable to believe they must retrace the distance they had come

At first he thought they would be pursued, for the movement of so many people and horses was not quiet. But to his faint astonishment, no one came. After a while, the column began to move with something resembling organization, for the knights were used to riding to war and their servants were used to following orders. To make sure no one was falling behind—though there was little he could do if they were—Runacarendalur mounted Gwaenor and forced the destrier to trot up and down the slow-moving column of servants and knights.

Gwaenor was irritable and short-tempered, snapping at anyone who was near and lashing out with his heels. It was no more than the other destriers were doing—in their experience, a battle was followed by food and rest— but it made them difficult to control and impossible to ride or lead as a close-packed group. The Lightborn could bespell them—just as Carangil had bespelled Ladyholder Glorthiachiel’s mount—but that could be disastrous if they needed to give battle quickly. For now, it was enough that the Lightborn led the column and lit the way, that the remains of the army had formed up into their usual meisnes, that everyone was moving.

He would not think about what must happen when they had to stop: the Lightborn could Call water at need, but the army had no food at all.

“Prince Runacarendalur.” A voice at his side jarred Runacarendalur out of his uncomfortable thoughts.

“Nimrosian.”

The commander of the Caerthalien Household komentai’a smiled effortfully. “We have had better days, have we not, my prince?”

The wry understatement was almost enough to make Runacarendalur laugh. “Far better, old friend.”

“Yet this day is not lost, unless you and Ladyholder Glorthiachiel are lost,” Nimrosian continued. “Four days to the border—if not more. Yet if you and the lady were to ride on ahead…”

“And leave you?” Runacarendalur said, horrified. To abandon one’s command on the field was worse than foolishness. It was cowardice.

“We are of little value to Oronviel,” Nimrosian said. “Lord Bolecthindial will ransom us, should we surrender. Or avenge us, if our surrender is not accepted. But you and Ladyholder Glorthiachiel would be great prizes. The ransom Oronviel might ask would be ruinous indeed.”

“He’s right,” Helecanth said. “A small party can move fast. And a troop of horse could meet us at the border crossing and even cross the border to bring Ladyholder Glorthiachiel to safety.”

“Then you must—” Runacarendalur began.

“You are the only one of sufficient rank to curb the lady’s … courage,” Nimrosian said tactfully. “I beg you, Prince Runacarendalur. For her safety, if not for yours. Go, now. If you are well away by dawn we may be able to convince them you yet ride with us.”

He knew they were right, but it was agony to admit it. “I must have another horse. She will not permit Carangil to be left behind.”

“I will see to it,” Nimrosian said. “Will you inform the lady?”

“Yes,” Runacarendalur said, sighing.

“I will remain here,” Helecanth said, before Runacarendalur could order her to accompany him. “My armor is known to Thoromarth, and I must bear your standard. Elerosha will ride with you. I will send him to you.”

“You must—” For a moment, he could not summon words. “You must send to me, if you are captured. Not to my father.”

Even though he could not see it, he heard the smile in her voice as she replied. “I shall expect you to beggar yourself to pay my ransom. Now go.”

It seemed only the work of moments for Runacarendalur to reach the front of the column and explain Nimrosian’s plan. Ladyholder Glorthiachiel received his speech in an icy silence, giving him the barest nod of assent. Then Elerosha arrived, leading a second destrier. Carangil laid his hands upon its neck and its wild-eyed trembling subsided.

The four riders trotted into the darkness. Soon they had left the slow-moving column behind.

* * *

It was still grey dawn when her chamber-page roused Vieliessar, bringing the word of Oronviel’s sentries that Caerthalien’s army had stolen away in the night, just as she’d suspected it would. She decided to take five hundred horse to follow the remains of Caerthalien’s army and leave two hundred more to guard her supply train. The rest of her people could return to their duties, for no matter how crushing a defeat she had given Caerthalien, this attack might still be a feint to cloak another.

As they rode across the battlefield, flocks of carrion birds startled up from the tangled bodies; in the grey mist of morning she saw the low, slinking shapes of other predators ghost away until they could feed undisturbed once more. Her people would not return to the Great Keep until Oronviel’s dead had been removed from the field, but those belonging to Caerthalien would lie here until they rotted.

It was almost impossible to say where the battlefield ended and Caerthalien’s camp began. The only difference between the two was that in the camp, the wreckage of bodies was replaced by the wreckage of things: everything a princely army carried to war, shattered and spoiled.

By the time they’d passed both battlefield and camp, the day was bright and the ground was even. Vieliessar’s company moved to the trot. They had only gone a few miles when they encountered the first of the Caerthaliens. Their plain dull clothing marked them as lesser servants, those who performed menial work: setting the tents, fetching and carrying. They leaped to their feet at the sound of horses and clustered so closely around Vieliessar’s force that the knights were forced to rein their destriers to a halt.

“Vieliessar High King! Vieliessar High King!” First one, then another, spoke the words, until all of them cried her name together as they crowded forward, reaching out to touch her. “Vieliessar High King!”

The destriers began to fret and dance, unhappy at being crowded. Moved—and more than a little frightened by the power of what she had unleashed—she reached out to touch the hands of those who reached out for her. They look to me for protection now, she realized. Not because I am their War Prince but because I will be their King.

“Let us pass,” Bethaerian demanded, her voice tight with tension. “Our supply wagons follow us—you will be fed!”

“Let me pass,” Vieliessar said to those nearest to her. “I am not yet High King.”

Slowly the crowd moved away, opening a pathway through which the company could ride.

“There is a stream only a little way to the south,” Bethaerian said as they rode on. “Do they not hear it?”

“Castel servants,” another komen answered dismissively. “They have no more wits than sheep.”

“Say rather that they are in a strange place, and those lords they looked to for protection have left them,” Vieliessar corrected sharply. Gaellas ducked his head, acknowledging the rebuke, but it would take far more than a few small corrections to change the way the komentai’a thought.

This was the first group of stragglers they encountered, but not the last. Some sat unmoving at the side of the road, some fled at their approach, some continued walking, but many, seeing her banner, hailed Vieliessar as