those in their families. Add to that the fact that Dusaan might have spies on the battle plain ready to report back to him any strange behavior on Keziah’s part, and they were risking her life merely by standing and talking to one another. “I won’t let them get past us. You have my word on that.”
“Shouldn’t the three of us be together then, fighting in the same place?”
“The first minister and I will be together on the Curgh lines, and if I need your power too, I can find you.”
She nodded again, but appeared tense and uncertain.
“I should return to my duke,” Fotir said, his gaze wandering northward, to the Braedon army. “And I’d suggest, Archminister, that you find Kearney. I expect that we’ll be raising mists and summoning winds before long.”
Chapter Six
That Fotir was right shouldn’t have surprised Keziah at all. She had spent enough time with Curgh’s first minister to realize that he was every bit as brilliant as he was reputed to be. When he warned that Braedon’s attack would come before the day was out, she should have believed him.
Nor should she have been taken aback by the ferocity of the empire’s assault. She had seen combat before, only a year earlier. The fight to end the siege at Kentigern had not lacked for violence or blood, and though she had been horrified by what she witnessed, she had also believed that the experience had hardened her, preparing her for the day when once again she would have to follow her king into battle. Nothing, though, could have readied her for the storm of steel and flesh and blood that raged before her now.
It seemed as well that she was not the only one. Even with scouts from Heneagh, Curgh, and the King’s Guard keeping watch on the Braedon army, the enemy’s attack caught the Eibitharians off guard. The empire’s army gave no warning at all. Among the houses of Eibithar it was tradition to loose a single arrow into the sky over the battle plain before commencing an attack. Braedon offered no such gesture. Nor did their Qirsi raise a mist to conceal their numbers. Keziah did not even hear an order shouted to the empire’s archers before their first volley. One moment all seemed as it had for the past several days, the next a thousand arrows were carving across the sky and pelting down on Eibithar’s warriors.
Even before the first of the darts struck, Braedon’s soldiers had begun their charge across the moor, sunlight glinting off their blades and helms, the earth seeming to tremble with the roar of their war cries. Kearney and his dukes barely had time to call their men to arms, much less marshal an ordered defense. They had thought that the attack would be concentrated on Heneagh’s lines-clearly Welfyl’s army was no match for Javan’s or Kearney’s.
But Braedon’s commanders, rather than striking at the weakest point in Eibithar’s defenses, aimed their assault on the King’s Guard itself, the strongest of the three armies. Curgh and Heneagh weren’t spared. Far from it. Within moments of that first volley of arrows, all three armies were under attack, but Kearney’s guard bore the brunt of the onslaught. Poorly prepared for the intensity of Braedon’s attack, Eibithar’s men were forced to fall back. Kearney and Javan had managed to get their archers in place soon enough to loose one barrage of arrows at the charging Braedony soldiers, but after that, their bowmen had little choice but to draw swords and fight with the rest. Heneagh’s archers didn’t loose a single arrow before the empire’s men crashed into their lines.
“Why would they attack this way?” Keziah called over the din of battle, as she rode beside Kearney, who was rallying his men as best he could.
“Because it’s working!” he shouted back, green eyes blazing, his face damp with sweat.
She nodded, wishing she hadn’t asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said a moment later. “None of us expected this. But I think they wanted to keep our armies from working together. Had they focused their attack on Welfyl, Javan and I would have banded together to try to flank them. This way we have no chance to combine our forces.”
Keziah nodded a second time, eyeing the battle with apprehension. The king’s men were still giving ground, more grudgingly now, but there could be no mistaking the trend. It wouldn’t be long before Kearney rode forward to join the fighting. He had deployed his men as best he could under the circumstances, and already he was glancing toward the lines, his hand wandering to the hilt of his sword. And as much as Keziah feared for him, she envied him more. She felt useless. She had no place in this battle. Though competent with a blade, she was neither skilled enough, nor strong enough, to fight beside these men. None of Braedon’s soldiers were on horseback, so having the magic her people called language of beasts did her no good, and with the men already fighting at close quarters, it did no good to raise a mist or wind.
Looking toward the middle of the fighting, Keziah tried to catch sight of Grinsa or Fotir. The fighting there appeared every bit as vicious as it did along Kearney’s lines, and like the King’s Guard, Curgh’s army looked to have slowed Braedon’s advance somewhat. Gazing beyond Javan’s army, however, she could see that the men of Heneagh were still being driven back with alarming speed. She didn’t need Kearney’s knowledge of military matters to understand how vital it was that Welfyl’s men keep the Braedony force from breaching their lines.
“Keziah.”
She forced herself to meet his gaze, knowing what he would say.
“I have to join my men. I can’t just-”
“I know,” she said. “Go. Orlagh guide your blade and keep you safe.”
“And you.”
They stared at one another for just a moment more, Keziah doing her best to commit his features to memory, every line on the youthful face, every strand of silken hair, silvered before its time and gleaming in the bright sun.
An instant later, so suddenly that she actually started, Kearney pulled his sword free and swung his mount around, plunging into the bloody tumult. Even as the tide of the fighting drew him away from her, she could still see him, towering and fell atop his mount, his sword rising and falling, its blade stained crimson. It didn’t take long for the battle to close in around him, as if cutting him off from her, from any path to safety.
Such confusion, such frenzy, such carnage. As Keziah watched the battle unfold, one thought kept echoing in her mind, and it scared her more than all that she saw.
She could even imagine different ways it might be done, ways she might do it herself. “You possess both language of beasts and mists and winds,” the Weaver told her the last time he walked in her dreams, just after he punished her for failing to kill Cresenne. “They should serve you quite well in this regard.”
He was right, of course. She could see it now, how easy it would be. A sudden gust of wind might alter the path of an arrow aimed at another. Or even better, a single word whispered to Kearney’s mount might make the beast throw the king into the fury around him. No one, no matter his skill as a warrior, would survive long on his back amid the steel and the blood.
Keziah was horrified at herself for thinking any of this, but once she began, she couldn’t stop. As more died, falling at the feet of Kearney’s mount, it would be more and more difficult for the horse to step true. A shaper might break one of the beast’s legs and drive the king to the ground that way. Or he might shatter Kearney’s blade as the king struck at another, leaving the king defenseless. Working with a second person, an assassin perhaps, a Qirsi might raise a mist to conceal the other’s approach. With so many sorcerers on the battle plain, with so many dying in this fight, almost anything was possible.
How many of the Qirsi around her served the conspiracy? To how many of them had the Weaver given the order to kill her king? Surely she wasn’t the only one. As the Weaver himself had reminded her, she had already failed him once. Knowing that she had loved Kearney, that she might love him still, he would not trust her with this unless he had others poised to act should she falter.
Frightened now, convinced that one of the Weaver’s servants would make an attempt on Kearney’s life at the first opportunity, Keziah very nearly spurred her mount forward into the fray. She had no idea what she would do when she reached the king, she only knew that she wanted to be there, to guard him, to watch for the Weaver’s killers. The archminister had gone so far as to adjust her sword in preparation for entering the battle, when she felt
