We'll leave their fate in your hands – or should I say, those of your archers?'
And with that, he smiled wickedly and turned his horse to gallop with his knights back toward his lines.
'Ah,' Maram said to me, 'I'm afraid to want to know what he meant by that.'
But the implication of his words soon became terribly clear. The Librarians along the wall began to call out to Lord Grayam to mount a sally outside the walls to rescue those who had been crucified. Lord Grayam listened for a few moments and then raised his hand to stay their voices. And then he said, 'Count Ulanu would like us to do just as you suggest. So that he could slaughter our knights while we attempted to rescue those for whom there can be no rescue other than death.'
'Then what are we to do?' a sad-faced knight named Jonatham asked. 'Watch them bake before our eyes beneath the sun?'
'We know what we must do,' Lord Grayam said. The bitterness in his voice hurt me worse than the poison that Morjin's man had put into my blood. 'No, no, please,' I said. 'Let's make a sally, while we can.'
A hundred knights called out to ride their war horses into the face of the enemy and free the crucified women and men. But again Lord Grayam held up his hand and said, 'You might kill many of the enemy, but there would be no time to pull our people down from their crosses. In the end, all of you would be killed or captured yourselves. And so we would lose what little hope of victory that remains to us.'
The Librarians, steeped in the wisdom of the books they guarded, bowed before this logic.
'Archers!' Lord Grayam called out. Take up your bows!'
I stood stunned in silence as I watched the archers along the walls fit arrows to their bowstrings and the crossbowmen set their bolts.
'Every abomination,' Kane said. 'Every degradation of the spirit.'
Atara, alone of the archers there, refused to lift her bow. Her brilliant blue eyes filled with tears and partially blinded her to sight of what must be.
'Ulanu the Merciful,' Liljana said bitterly. 'Ulanu the Cruel.'
'No, no,' I whispered, 'they mustn't do this!'
'No, Val, they must,' Kane said. 'What if it were your brothers crucified out there?'
Every perversion, I thought, listening to the moans of the dying. What could be more perverse than to twist a man's love for his son into the necessity of slaying him?
'Fire!'
And so it was done. The Khaisham archers fired their arrows into their countrymen and friends. Set upon their crosses only seventy yards from the walls, they were easy targets, as Count Ulanu had intended them to be.
'Damn him!' Kane snarled. 'Damn his eyes! Damn his soul!'
Lord Grayam slumped against the battlements as if he had fired burning arrows into his own heart. I listened for the cries of his son and the other crucified Librarians, but now there was only the moaning of the wind.
Kane stood staring at Alphanderry's body, whose arms were opened wide as if to ask the mercy of the heavens. After a while, his fury poured into me, as did his dark thoughts.
'We should at least ride out and recover the body of our friend' I said. 'He shouldn't be left hanging for the vultures.'
'So,' Kane said, his eyes blazing into mine. 'So.'
I walked up to Lord Grayam and said, 'It was impossible to rescue your people, truly. But it may be that we could bring back our friend's body and a couple others for burial.'
'No, Sar Valashu,' Lord Grayam said, 'I couldn't allow that.'
'The enemy won't be expecting a sally now,' I said. 'We could ride like lightning and return before Count Ulanu could mount an attack.'
The knight named Jonatham called out to ride with us, and so did a dozen others.
And then a hundred more along the wall turned toward Lord Grayam with a fire in their hearts and a steel in their voices that could not be gainsaid. And so Lord Grayam, not wanting their spirits to be broken like his own, finally agreed to our wild plan.
'All right,' he said to me. 'You and Kane may go and take ten others but no more.
But go quickly before the enemy begins the day's assault.'
Already, Count Ulanu's war drums were booming out their terror as bugles blared out and called men to form up their battalions.
I pulled on my helmet, as did Kane his. Maram, due to his wounds, could not ride, and so would not be sallying forth with us. But Atara grabbed up some more arrows for her quiver, and the long, lean Jonatham came over to us, and we had two of our ten. He and Lord Grayam helped me in choosing the other eight knights for our sortie.
We climbed down from the wall and gathered in the courtyard below. Grooms brought up our horses from the stables. Lord Grayam had ordered his own family's armor fastened upon our horses. Altaru, who had taken me into battle against Waas, was used to the long, jointed criniere that protected the curve of his neck and the champfrein over his head and the other pieces of armor that protected him. And so was Kane's bay. But Fire was not; Atara chose to ride her fierce mare unencumbered, as the Sarni ride their steppe ponies into battle. Thus she could race her horse and turn her about with greater agility, the better to find her targets and fire off her arrows.
When we were all ready, we lined up behind the sally port set into the inner wall's main gate. Its iron- studded doors were thrown open, and we rode out, the twelve of us, across the rocky, barren ground. The cool morning wind found our faces and worked through the steel links of our armor. But it chilled us not at all because our hearts were now on fire. We galloped forward in a thunder of pounding hooves. It took only seconds to cover the ground between the wall and the line of crosses, but this was enough time for Count Ulanu's archers to begin firing at us and for him to order a whole company of cavalry to meet our unexpected charge.
An arrow pinged off my helmet and another struck my mail over my shoulder but failed to penetrate its tough steel. Another arrow deflected off the poitrel protecting Altaru's chest. But some of the knights behind me weren't lucky. One of them, a powerful Librarian named Braham, cried out as a whining shaft suddenly transfixed his forearm. And one of the knighte horses on my left a stout chestnut gelding, whinnied in pains as another buried itself in his hind leg beneath the croupiere. Even so, we reached the crosses in good order. We would have a few moments, but no more, before. Count Ulanu's knights fell upon us.
I steadied Alaru beneath Alphanderry's cross. Even desecrated and left to hang uncovered in shame, he retained a beauty and nobility that defied death. Cords bound his arms to the beam while iron spikes bent over against the palms like clamps, pierced either hand. Another spike had been driven through his feet. I saw immediately that had he been still alive, it would have been impossible to pull him down in the seconds that remained to us. But he was dead, and so, standing up in my stirrups, I drew my sword and touched it to the cords binding his head and arms; they parted like strands of grass. Then I swung Alkaladur three times, against Alphanderry's ankles and wrists. His body fell down toward me; Kane, who had brought his horse up dose against mine, helped me catch it. We draped him across Altaru's back, between his steel-shod neck and my belly. His hands and feet we had to leave nailed to the cross.
Jonatham and Braham likewise managed to recover the body of Captain Donalam, even as a rain of arrows poured down upon us. Two more of Lord Grayam's Librarians cut down one of their companions as an arrow struck into his lifeless body and added insult to death And then the arrow storm suddenly ceased. For Count Ulanu's knights rode upon us then, and his archers did not wish to kill them in trying to annihilate us.
Although we were outnumbered seven to one, we had that which overcame mere numbers. Atara, her blonde hair streaming back behind her irt the wind, rode about wildly firing off death with every bend of her great bow. Jonatham charged the enemy knights once, twice, three times, and his lance became an instrument of vengeance, piercing throat or eye or heart with a lethal accuracy. Kane's sword flashed out with the fury of lightning and thunder, while I wielded the Bright Sword with all the terrible art he had taught me. Irode Altaru straight into the enemy knights where they gathered like a knot of shields and horses, and no matter the armor protecting them, their limbs and heads flew from their bodies like blood sausages encased in steel. The sun rising over Mount Redruth cast its rays upon Alkaladur, which blazed with a blinding light. The sight of it struck terror into even those knights who had yet to come near it As if they were of one mind, like a flock of birds, they suddenly turned about toward their lines and put their horses to flight.
We managed to cut down five more crucified Librarians before the arrow storm began again. Behind the
