Tigana (93 page)

In time to see the prone Ygrathen killed by Alais bren Rovigo with a clean swordthrust in the back of his neck.

It seemed to Devin that he knew a moment of almost hallucinatory stillness then in the midst of carnage. He looked at Alais, at her clear, mild, blue eyes. He tried to speak. His throat was dry. Their gazes locked for a second. It was hard for Devin to absorb, to
understand
this image of her with a reddened sword in her hand.

He looked past her, and instantly the stillness was gone, shattered. Fifteen, perhaps twenty of the Ygrathens were up on the summit. More were coming. And some of them did have bows. He saw an arrow fly, to be embedded in one of the shields around the wizards. There was a sound of quick footsteps ascending the slope to his left. No time to speak, even if he could have. They were here to die if they had to, it had always been possible. There was a reason why they had come. There was a dream, a prayer, a tune his father had taught him as a child. He held his left hand tightly to his wound and turned from Alais, stumbling forward, gripping his sword, to meet the next man scrambling up the ridge.

A mild day, the sun in and out of the clouds pushed swiftly along by the breeze. In the morning they had walked in the meadows north of the castle gathering flowers, armfuls of them. Irises, anemones, bluebells. The sejoia trees were just
coming into flower now this far south; they left the white blossoms for later in the season.

They were back in Castle Borso drinking mahgoti tea just past midday when Elena abruptly made a small, frightened sound. She stood up rigidly straight, her hands clutching at her head. Her tea spilled unregarded, staining the Quileian carpet.

Alienor quickly laid her own cup down. ‘It has come?’ she said. ‘The summons? Elena, what can I do?’

Elena shook her head. She could scarcely hear the other woman’s words. There was a clearer, harder, more compelling voice in her head. Something that had never happened before, not even on the Ember Nights. But Baerd had been right, her stranger who had come to them out of darkness and changed the shape of the Ember wars.

He had returned to the village late in the day that followed, after his friends had come down from the pass and ridden west. He had spoken to Donar and Mattio and to Carenna and Elena and said that what the Night Walkers shared had to be a kind of magic, if not the same as wizardry. Their bodies changed in the Ember Nights, they walked under a green moon through lands that were not there by the light of day, they wielded swords of growing corn that altered under their hands. They were wedded in their own fashion, he had said, to the magic of the Palm.

And Donar had agreed that this was so. So Baerd had told them, carefully, what his purpose was, and that of his friends, and he’d asked Elena to come to Castle Borso until summer’s end. In case, he’d said, in case it was possible for their power to be tapped in this cause.

Would they do this? There would be danger. He had asked it diffidently, but there had been no hesitation in Elena as she looked into his eyes and answered that she would. Nor in the others when they agreed. He had come to them in their own need. They owed him at least this much, and
more. And they too were living through tyranny in their own land. His cause in the daylight was their own.

Elena di Certando? Are you there? Are you in the castle?

She didn’t know this mind-voice, but within its clarity she could sense a desperation; there seemed to be chaos all around him.

Yes. Yes, I am. I’m here. What … what must I do?

I don’t believe it!
A second voice joined them, deeper, as imperative.
Erlein, you have reached her!

Is Baerd there?
she asked, a little desperately herself. The sudden link was dizzying, and the sense of tumult all around; she swayed, almost fell. She reached out and put both her hands on the high back of a chair. The room in Castle Borso was beginning to fade for her. Had Alienor spoken now she would not have even heard.

He is,
the first man said quickly.
He is here with us and we have terrible need of help. We are at war! Can you link to your friends? To the others? We will help you. Please! Reach for them!

She had never tried such a thing, not by daylight nor even under the green moon of the Ember Nights. She had never known anything like this wizards’ link, but she felt their power resting in her, and she knew where Mattio would be, and Donar; and Carenna would be at home with her newest child. She closed her eyes and reached out for the three of them, straining to focus her mind on the forge, the mill, Carenna’s house in the village. To focus, and then to call. To summon.

Elena, what …?
Mattio. She had him.

Join me!
she sent quickly.
The wizards are here. There is war.

He asked no more questions. She could feel his steadying presence in her mind as the wizards helped her open to him. She registered his own sudden, disoriented shock at the link
to the other men. Two of them, no three, there was a third one there as well.

Elena, has it come? Have they sent?
Donar in her mind, seizing at truth like a weapon to his hand.

I am here, love!
Carenna’s mind-voice, quick and bright, exactly the same as her speech.
Elena, what must we do?

Hold to each other and open to us!
the deep presence of the second wizard was there to answer.
We may now have a chance. There is danger, I will not lie, but if we hold together—for once in this peninsula—we may yet break through! Come, join us, we must forge our minds into a shield. I am Sandre d’Astibar and I never died. Come to us now!

Elena opened her mind to him, and reached out. And in that moment she felt as though her own body was entirely gone, as if she were no more than a conduit, like and yet very unlike what happened on the Ember Nights. A clammy fear of this unknown thing rose in her. Defiantly she fought it back. Her friends were with her, and—unbelievably—the Duke of Astibar was there, and alive, and Baerd was with him in far-off Senzio, battling against the Tyrants.

He had come to them, to her, in their own war. She had heard him weep and had lain with him in love on a hill in the Ember dark after the green moon had set. She would not fail him now. She would lead the Carlozzini to him along the pathway of her mind and her soul.

Without warning they broke through. The link was forged. She was in a high place under a fiercely blazing sun, seeing with the eyes of the Duke of Astibar on a hill in Senzio. The vision rocked with stomach-churning dislocation. Then it steadied and Elena saw men killing each other in a valley below, armies grappling together in the heat like beasts in a convulsive embrace. She heard screaming so loud she felt the sound as pain. Then she became aware of something else.

Sorcery. North of them, that hill. Brandin of Ygrath. And in that moment Elena and the three other Night Walkers understood why they had been summoned, feeling in their own minds the punishing weight of the assault they had to resist.

Back in Castle Borso, Alienor stood by, helpless and blind in her uncertainty, understanding nothing of this at all, only knowing that it was happening, that it was upon them at last. She wanted to pray, to reach back towards words not thought or spoken in almost twenty years. She saw Elena bring her hands up to cover her face.

‘Oh no,’ she heard the girl whisper in a voice thin as old parchment. ‘So strong! How can one man be so strong?’

Alienor’s hands gripped each other so tightly the knuckles were white. She waited, desperately seeking a clue to what was happening to all of them, so far to the north where she could not go.

She did not, could not hear Sandre d’Astibar’s reply to Elena:

He is strong yes, but with you we will be stronger! Oh, children, we can do it now! In the name of the Palm, together we can be strong enough!

What Alienor did see was how Elena’s hands came down, how her white face grew calm, the wild, primitive terror leaving her staring eyes.

‘Yes,’ she heard the other woman whisper. ‘Yes.’

Then there was silence in that room in Castle Borso under the Braccio Pass. Outside, the cool wind of the highlands blew the high white clouds across the sun and away, and across it and away, and a single hunting hawk hovered on motionless wings in that passing of light and shadow over the face of the mountains.

In fact, the next man scrabbling up the slope of the cliff was Ducas di Tregea. Devin had actually begun to swing his sword before he recognized who it was.

Ducas reached the summit in two hard, churning strides and stood beside him. He was a fearful sight. His face was covered in blood, dripping down into his beard. There was blood all over him, and wet on his sword. He was smiling though, a terrible red look of battle-lust and rage.

‘You are hurt!’ he said sharply to Devin.

‘I wouldn’t talk,’ Devin grunted, pressing his left hand to his torn side. ‘Come on!’

Quickly they turned back east. More than fifteen of the Ygrathens were still on their summit, pressing forward against the untrained band of men Alessan had kept back to defend the wizards. The numbers were almost even, but the Ygrathens were the picked and deadly warriors of that realm.

Even so, even with this, they were not getting through. And they would not, Devin realized with a surge of exultation in his heart, rising high over pain and grief.

They would not, because facing them, side by side, swinging blades together in their longed-for battle after all the long waiting years that had run by, were Alessan, Prince of Tigana, and Baerd bar Saevar, the only brother of his soul, and the two of them were absolute and deadly, and even beautiful, if killing could be so.

Devin and Ducas rushed over. But by the time they got there five Ygrathens only were left, then three. Then only two. One of them made as if to lay down his sword. Before he could do so, a figure moved forward with an awkward, deceptive swiftness from the ring guarding the wizards. Dragging his lame foot, Ricaso came up to the Ygrathen. Before anyone could stay him he swung his old, half-rusted blade in a passionate, scything arc, cleaving through the links in armour to bury itself in the man’s breast.

Then he fell to his knees on the ground beside the soldier he’d killed, weeping as though his soul was pouring out of him.

Which left one of them only. And the last was the leader, the large, broad-chested man Devin had seen down below. The man’s hair was plastered flat to his head, he was red-faced with heat and exhaustion, sucking hard for breath, but his eyes glared at Alessan.

‘Are you fools?’ he gasped. ‘Fighting for the Barbadian? Instead of with a man who has joined the Palm? Do you
want
to be slaves?’

Slowly Alessan shook his head. ‘It is twenty years too late for Brandin of Ygrath to join the Palm. It was too late the day he landed here with an invading force. You are a brave man. I would prefer not to kill you. Will you give us an oath in your own name and lay down your sword in surrender?’

Beside Devin, Ducas snarled angrily. But before the Tregean could speak, the Ygrathen said: ‘My name is Rhamanus. I offer it to you in pride, for no dishonour has ever attached to that name. You will have no oath from me though. I swore one to the King I love before I led his Guard here. I told him I would stop you or die. It is an oath I will keep.’

He raised his sword towards Alessan, and gestured—though not seriously, Devin realized afterwards—to strike at the Prince. Alessan did not even move to ward the blow. It was Baerd whose blade came up and then swept downward to bite with finality into the neck of the Ygrathen, driving him to the ground.

‘Oh, my King,’ they heard the man say then, thickly, through the blood rising in his mouth. ‘Oh, Brandin, I am so sorry.’

Then he rolled over on his back and lay still, his sightless eyes staring straight at the burning sun.

The sun had been burning hot as well, the morning he had defied the Governor and taken a young serving-girl for tribute down the river from Stevanien, so many years ago.