Without Lysaer’s light to stay the shadows, many more would have died by the grottos or been abandoned to the mindless distress induced by Arithon’s maze wards that had ensorcelled the troop in the west valley.
If not for Prince Lysaer, Lord Commander Diegan himself would not have left Tal Quorin’s banks alive.
In nervous speculation and vehement rage, Etarra’s garrison made clear whom they blamed for the carnage. Men hailed the prince, then brandished weapons and cursed the shifter of shadows their campaign had failed to take down.
Unsettled by his reflections, Lysaer stirred. At his knees, the soldier tossed and groaned, an arrow that had not quite killed lodged deep inside his lower gut. His suffering would be prolonged and painful and a peppery barmaid who wore his trinkets would be widowed with no parting kiss to cold lips. Without enough wagons for the wounded the dead must be interred where they lay, amid the flinty soil of the tors with only piled stones for their markers.
‘I’ll see you avenged,’ the prince vowed in a spiking rush of sincerity. He touched the man’s shoulder and arose.
While darkness had lasted, the cries and the noise of arriving stragglers had filled the camp, queerly amplified by the fog. The scope of disaster had loomed through the night, still possible to deny. But now as day brightened and the mists shredded away, the damages became appallingly apparent. In a campaign planned for easy victory, two thirds of a war host of ten thousand had been decimated in a single engagement. Lysaer walked as the impact of sight rocked the campsite, men’s voices tangled in anger and shrill disbelief. The worn band of officers struggled yet again to rechannel shock and grief into tasks, while others exhorted crushed and silent men to gather for biscuit and beef around the cookfires.
Raised to rule, well hardened for the trials of leadership, Lysaer shared the burden where he could. He spoke and touched shoulders, and once faced down a man who had wildly drawn a dagger and raved to anyone who would listen that he intended to lead a foray to go reiving back into Strakewood. Sympathetic to the men but possessed of a cool self-containment the s’Ilessid prince reviewed the wreck of Etarra’s garrison with no incapacitating pang of conscience.
Where he passed, his unassailable assurance touched the men and left them silent with awe. His equilibrium could encompass seven thousand casualties. He could feel haunted and sad that Arithon had engaged in unscrupulous use of little children but not have lasting regrets that the wholesale elimination of barbarian women and young had been necessary to guard town security. No city could recoup from a defeat as terrible as this, were they left with belief such casualties could recur again.
‘Your Grace, have you eaten?’ A fat cook tagged at his shoulder, diffident and anxious to please.
Lysaer inclined his head in courtesy. ‘I’ve hardly noticed I was hungry.’ He let himself be led to a fire; politely tasted the soup that was handed to him.
Haunted by association as his gaze became tranced by the flame, he found himself reliving the moment when
Although no cost could be counted too great to eradicate the s’Ffalenn bastard before more innocent lives could fall prey to his wiles, in daylight and cold reason, hindsight recast self-sacrifice as an impulse of hot-headed idiocy. Lysaer shivered, set his soup bowl with a clink on the board the cook used to stack utensils. No guarantee insisted that Arithon should have died in that strike. He was clever enough to escape, perhaps; Rauven’s teaching lent him tricks.
The stalking uncertainty lingered, that the inspiration to risk martyrdom for the cause might not have been Lysaer’s own.
Once in
How better for Arithon to win licence to toy with this world as he pleased, than to dedicate his enemy to self- destruction? Lysaer burned inside with recrimination. If faintness from blood loss had not disrupted his attack, worse horrors could have visited Athera than seven thousand dead Etarran soldiers.
‘Your Grace?’ interrupted a staff messenger.
Lysaer glanced up and identified livery with the black and white blazon of the headhunters’ league. Immediately contrite, since the boy could have stood several minutes awaiting acknowledgment, he said, ‘Pesquil sent you?’
‘The wagons are ready to leave, your Grace.’ Embarrassed by the intensity of Lysaer’s attention, the boy regarded the grass, in this place trampled and muddied by the grinding passage of men seeking comfort to ease their misery. ‘My lord Pesquil said Lord Commander Diegan is awake and asking after you.’
Lysaer dredged up energy to give a quick smile of reassurance. ‘Would you lead me to him?’
The boy brightened. ‘At once, your Grace.’
Together, they crossed the camp. The mist was thinning quickly now. Grooms stood in for tired messengers, since sorrowfully decimated horse lines left them short of duties. Some of the watch fires were doused. Between the leaning scaffolds of weapon racks and the comings and goings from the officers’ pavilions, patrols prepared to ride out. The nearer circuits would be quartered on foot, sound mounts being precious and few.
Lysaer assessed all with the sure eye of a ruler and where he made suggestions he was given deference and respect. He took care to acknowledge every greeting with a nod, a smile, or with names, if he knew the speaker: Pesquil’s young staff-runner was overwhelmingly impressed.
In subdued little groups, conversation underscored by the screeling hiss of busy grindstones, the veteran pikemen mended gear. A few commiserated over losses. Most others slept sprawled on wet ground, their blankets reapportioned first for litters and then used for pallets and rough bandaging. Past the phalanx of the supply stores, unloaded in haste from the wagonbeds and lashed under tarps by the carters, the racket and confusion of the night was subsiding. In sunlight, the green recruits who had seen their companions half-butchered or drowned were less driven to seek blind relief in scraps and hysterical boasting. Shrieks from the campfollowers’ tents raised in dissonance over the sobs of refugees from the west valley still deranged by terror of the dark.
The core of the army remained, Lysaer assessed. Carefully handled, these men could be reforged into a troop of formidable strengths. All he lacked was excuse to stay; already his authority was not questioned.
The wagon-train bound for Etarra formed up, its escort of fifty lancers in twitchy lines as men made last minute
