The Chronicles of Amber

cheer.

I sagged in my saddle, grinning madly, exhausted beyond words. As I turned, taking in the battlefield, I saw bodies everywhere, human and hell-creature alike, piled three and four deep in places.

My arms trembled. My head ached. I had never felt so tired before in my entire life.

And yet I felt a wild elation—it had been a victory of epic proportion. Although two-thirds of my men had fallen, dead or wounded, we had still won the battle. And we had killed twice as many of them as they had killed of us.

“O-ber-on! O-ber-on! O-ber-on!” The men began to chant my name.

I raised my sword and sat up straight in my saddle. “Back to camp!” I cried. “Carry the wounded and our dead!”

Still cheering, they fanned out across the battlefield, looking for human survivors, killing whatever hell- creatures still lived.

There would be no prisoners in this war, I thought.

By the time we started back toward camp, scouts had ridden out to get a report and tell me what had happened. Their news wasn’t good. Although Locke’s men had ultimately carried the day, Locke had been badly wounded, dragged from his saddle, and left for dead by the hell-creatures. His men had carried him back to his tent, where physicians now tended him.

That was the good news.

Davin’s men had lost their battle. Davin hadn’t made it back. He lay lost somewhere on the battlefield, amid the corpses of eighteen thousand other men.

I left my horse and hurried to see Locke. I pushed past the physicians, ignoring their pleas to let the general rest, and knelt at the side of his cot.

Although they had bandaged his head, blood had already soaked through the bandages.

“Locke,” I said, “it’s me.”

His eyes flickered and opened. Slowly he turned his head toward me, though I could tell it pained him greatly to do so.

“What news?” he croaked.

“We won,” I said. “At least for today.”

He smiled a bit, and then he died.

Taking a deep breath, I reached out, shut his eyes, and stood. Priests hurried forward and began to say their prayers, getting his body ready for burial. I’d have to ask Freda what we did with our family’s dead, I thought distantly.

“Send runners if the enemy moves on us again,” I told Locke’s aides. “I must tell our father.”

“Yes, General,” they said to me.

Slowly I turned and walked out into the open. Officers called to me for news of Locke, but I ignored them.

With a heavy heart, ignoring the lightning that once again struck the castle walls, I began the long walk back. It would be dark soon, I thought. The attack would cease. I would go in and let them know what had happened.

It wasn’t a duty I looked forward to.

Chapter 20

The two guards at Dworkin’s door had been replaced, I noticed as I approached. They snapped to attention, but made no move to stop me.

I went past them and entered my father’s workshop without knocking.

He took one look at my face, then sagged into a chair.

“The news is bad,” he said flatly, “isn’t it.”

“Davin and Locke are dead,” I told him. “But we won the day.”

“And tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” I said, “I will lead the men. We will fight and hope for the best.”

“Will you tell Freda?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, and without another word I turned and left.

I ran into Aber first and paused to tell him the news, but he didn’t seem surprised.

“I told you Locke wasn’t a traitor,” he said.

“No,” I agreed, “he wasn’t. He may well have been the best of us all. I have to tell Freda. I promised Dad.”

“She’s taken over the little room off the audience hall. She won’t come out. I’ve tried all day.”

“What’s she doing?”

“I don’t know.”

I sighed, rose. ‘I’ll go talk to her,” I said. One more unpleasant task on top of an unpleasant day, I thought.

I went to the audience hall, but when I tried the door to the little room, it had been locked from the inside.

“Freda,” I called, knocking. “Let me in.”

She didn’t answer.

“Freda?” I called. “It’s me, Oberon, Open up, will you? It’s important. Freda!”

I heard bolts sliding, and then the door opened a foot—enough for me to slip inside. She closed it and locked it behind me.

“You should not have come,” she said.

She looked terrible, face pinched and drawn, cheeks gray, hair a disheveled mess.

“Aber is worried about you.”

“Worried about me?” She gave a laugh. “I am the least of anyone’s worries. The end has come. We are trapped. We will die here.”

“You’ve seen this in your cards?” I nodded toward the deck of Trumps scattered across the table, on top of Dworkin’s maps.

“No. I cannot see anything.”

I glanced at the two small windows set high in the wall. She had drawn the curtains, hiding the clouds and the incessant flicker of that odd blue lightning.

“There is an old saying,” I said. “Where there’s life, there’s hope.”

“It is not true.” She gestured at the table in the center of the room. Several candles, burnt down almost to nubs, showed her Trumps laid down in rows. “The patterns are random, without meaning. We will all die. We cannot survive without the Logrus.”

“I did,” I said. “I have lived my whole life without the Logrus.”

“And look where it has gotten you,” she said bitterly. “You would be dead now if Father had not saved you.”

“No,” I said. “I survived a year of fighting against the hell-creatures without the Logrus, or Dad, or you. I survived my whole life without once drawing on its power. I still cannot use the Logrus, and I am the one who survived today’s battle.”

“And… Locke and Davin?”

I swallowed, looked away. “I’m sorry.”

She began to cry. I put my arm around her.

“I’m not about to give up,” I said softly. “I’m not about to lie down and die here, trapped like an animal. Out of every life a little blood must spill. It makes us stronger. We will survive.”

“You do not know any better,” she said after a minute, and with some effort she regained control of herself and dried her tears. “The war is already over… we have lost.”