minute. “To the caves and crevices,” Errol ordered, not quite so loudly. “I don’t want to fight unless we have to, not this time. I don’t yet want the Pyrthens to know the full extent of our presence here. But if we have to fight-well, I won’t make a speech. You know what we’re fighting for.”
The men looked at Errol. The light of battle shone in his eyes, and he was beautiful. They all knew what Errol meant. If they had to fight, they would fight for Corenwald, even if it didn’t feel like Corenwald anymore. The old man loved Corenwald; that was reason enough to love it, even if they had somehow forgotten how to love Corenwald for its own sake.
Silently, dragging pine boughs behind to cover their tracks, the men disappeared into the folds of the canyon walls behind them. Aidan and Dobro hid behind a dirt chimney that stood nearby. Errol and Jasper tucked themselves behind a clay wall that spurred out from the canyon wall.
They could hear the Pyrthens picking their way through the canyon’s maze well before they could see them. The Pyrthens were less than fifty strides away when they emerged from behind the nearest turning of the canyon wall. They were all on horseback, except for the man who led them. He was dressed in the rags of a slave. His bushy beard and wild, matted hair created a sharp contrast to the clean-shaven, close-cropped men who trailed behind him in tight formation. He kept his eyes on the ground; any tracker-guide would keep his eyes on the ground, and that was obviously what this man was. But Aidan could tell from the man’s shambling, defeated gait that he always looked at the ground. Still-oozing lash marks were visible through the holes in his tattered garment. His frame was broad; he should have been a big man. But hunger had gotten the better of him. He was mostly bone and skin.
Aidan somehow knew that the slave was a Corenwalder, perhaps a sailor captured by Pyrthen pirates or a mercenary captured in one of Pyrth’s unending wars. His heart went out to this countryman, forced to betray his own people by leading the enemy to their doorstep.
The shaggy, stooping slave stopped near the washing pool. “I have led you to Sinking Canyons,” he said. His voice was husky with thirst, but there was no mistaking his Corenwalder accent. “Now, by the general’s orders, you’re supposed to set me free.”
The Pyrthen commander looked over the scene. “You were to lead me to the rebel camp. I don’t see any rebels.”
“These canyons are vast and complex.” The slave spoke with some heat, though he never looked into the face of the commander. “I have no more idea than you do where the rebels are. My orders were to lead you to Sinking Canyons. That is what I have done.”
The commander’s mailed fist sent the Corenwalder slave sprawling to the ground. He snarled, “I’ll say what your orders are, you dog.”
The slave stood to his feet. Aidan noticed with great admiration that he didn’t even rub the cheek the Pyrthen had struck. “The general,” the slave began. “The general’s orders-you were to set me free when I had led you to Sinking Canyons. I have served him these three years.”
The commander laughed a cruel, mocking laugh. “Did you really think the general would set you free? You? A traitor to your own people?”
“My treachery served the general well enough,” said the slave.
The commander shrugged. “That may be. But the general thinks no more highly of you than your people, the ones you betrayed, must think of you. Neither do I, when it comes to it.”
“But the general’s orders…” the slave began, a little more hoarsely.
“The general’s orders were to kill you once we got to Sinking Canyons.” From the pleased look on the commander’s face, it was obvious he was telling the truth. “One never knows when a traitor will turn again.”
Despairing, the Corenwalder fell to his knees as the Pyrthen slid from his horse and unsheathed his sword. “I am betrayed,” he moaned.
The Pyrthen raised his sword and spoke. “It is no treachery to betray a traitor.”
Before the Pyrthen’s sword fell on the slave’s wretched neck, the canyon walls echoed with the voice of Errol, bellowing the name of his long-lost son like a war cry: “Ma-a-ay-n-a-a-a-ard!”
The old man appeared from his hiding place and closed on the Pyrthen with his broadsword raised above his head. He brought his weapon down on the seam of the Pyrthen’s black armor, where the shoulder plate met the breastplate. Ten Pyrthens were off their horses before Errol freed his blade for a second stroke. A quick, vicious thrust from an officer’s sword sent Errol to the ground. Arrows whistling down from the canyon rim felled a dozen horsemen. A second volley of arrows dropped a dozen more Pyrthens before the first wave of Corenwalder swordsmen fell on the enemy, making it impossible for the archers to go on shooting.
The Battle of Sinking Canyons was terrible. The Pyrthens were ruthless and efficient fighters. They hurt and killed their share of Corenwalders. But they were hugely outnumbered by the militiamen who appeared from the canyon’s every crack and crevice, like ants boiling out of the hidden holes of an anthill. Corenwalders circling around from the canyon mouth sealed off the invaders’ only escape route, but still the Pyrthens wouldn’t surrender. Three or four Pyrthens burst through the lines, dodged the archers’ arrows, and galloped to safety. The rest spilled their lifeblood on the sands of Sinking Canyons.
Soon after the fighting broke out, Maynard dragged his father to the safety of a small cave. For the slave who had led the Pyrthens to Sinking Canyons was, of course, Maynard, the second of Errol’s sons, who had once tried to pass himself off as the Wilderking in the Feechiefen Swamp. As the battle raged outside, Maynard held his dying father in the cool darkness and wept for the years he had wasted, for the sins he had committed against the father who had traded his own life for the life of a son who betrayed him.
While his life was ebbing away, Errol opened his eyes. When he saw his son, a faint smile flickered across his face. “Maynard,” he said. In spite of his weakness, the voice that spoke the name of his son was so strong with love and tenderness it seemed to bear away all the hurt that had passed between the two of them. “Maynard, you were never meant to be a slave.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Pyrthens were coming. Surely they would be coming after those few escaped horsemen returned to the main body of the army. The Pyrthens knew where the rebels were, knew how many they were, and knew that they were enemies.
There was no time to bury the dead with the honors the fighting men would have liked to accord to their fallen brothers. They placed the dead in tunnels-the Corenwalders in one chamber, the Pyrthens in another-and sealed them in.
The Errolsons buried their father in his own grave, out of the canyon in the plain above; they felt sure he would prefer to be buried in more solid ground than that of the canyons. Aidan, Percy, Jasper, and Brennus stood around their father’s grave while Aidan offered up a prayer of thanks for their father’s life. Maynard hung back a few steps, wanting to honor his father but not sure how welcome he would be among his brothers.
By the time Aidan had finished his prayer, Maynard was crying violent tears. He squatted on the ground, his bony arms folded around his knees, and rocked back and forth on his heels. His hoarse wailing echoed across the plain and off the canyon walls a hundred strides away.
Brennus opened his eyes and glared at his brother. “A little late for that, isn’t it, Maynard?”
“Brennus…” Aidan began, reproach in his voice.
“Don’t ‘Brennus’ me, Aidan. Does that howling do any honor to Father? It’s no more than the self-pity of a son who broke Father’s heart a thousand times over. A son who brought the enemy to our front porch, who betrayed thirty-six hundred men, the least of whom is more worthy than he. The son who was the direct cause of Father’s death. No, I don’t see how those tears honor Father at all.”
Maynard’s tears of shame and sorrow flowed all the more. His wailing grew louder, shriller.
