The Crow (13 page)

Ire was again asked to be a messenger, and became a familiar sight, flapping through the cloistered rooms from one Bard to another. He was a very different figure from the comically scrawny youngster Hem had rescued from the crows a month before. Then Ire had been on the awkward brink of maturity, his adult feathers thrusting through the remains of his baby down. Now all sign of fluff had vanished; his feathers were sleek, and he was developing the heavy body of a mature bird. He remained, in his adult plumage, pure white from his beak to the end of his tail, but unlike a proper albino did not have pink eyes: his irises were instead a deep flecked gold, and his beak was black. He had the innate intelligence of his kind, and also a magpie's fondness for bright or glittering objects; Hem had not been able to cure him from his habit of stealing from the dining halls small silver spoons, of which he had amassed a fairly impressive collection. But through his constant companionship with Hem, Ire had a much wider vocabulary than most birds, and the Bards in the Healing Houses found they could entrust him with more and more complex messages.

The patients in the Healing Houses coined a name for the strange boy, because of his fairer skin, and the crow that so often sat on his shoulders. They called him
Lios Hlaf,
the White Crow. Hem smiled when he heard this, remembering how the same name had once been used as a taunt; now, spoken by the wounded men and women for whom he cared, it seemed to him to be a mark of honor.

* * * *

Saliman did not return as he had promised, on the second day after he left. Hem and Zelika did not speak about it, but each knew the other was waiting for him. When they came home, they looked first to see whether he had returned: but Saliman's chambers stood empty. The few Bards who still lived in the Bardhouse were most often out, and on the second night the children prepared and ate their evening meal alone. They ate in Saliman's rooms, rather than in the dining hall, because it felt less lonely. Conversation lagged, because neither would speak about the topic uppermost in their minds: whether they should leave on the ships that were to carry the wounded out of Turbansk the following evening.

Hem had, of course, sworn that he would heed Saliman, but he was finding his promise harder and harder to contemplate. If Saliman did not return the following day, and Hem left, he would never know what had happened to the Bard, whether he was dead, or captured, or simply delayed. Hem didn't think he could bear not knowing, and was privately turning over in his head whether to stay, even for a little space of time. One more day, surely, would not count as breaking his promise. Zelika kept her own counsel.

After the meal, both of them were so exhausted that they went straight to bed, although Hem lay awake for a long time, his body humming with tiredness, the terrible sights he had seen during the day running through his head again and again. What if Saliman had been burned by the liquid fire of the dog-soldiers? Or perhaps he had been blinded by one of the black arrows or worse – many of them bore a terrible poison that made wounds that did not heal. Hem slipped uneasily into evil dreams, which he could not remember but which left a dark aftershadow when he awoke.

The next day Hem felt so depressed he could hardly get out of bed. He knew instantly that Saliman wasn't back; all night a part of his mind had been listening for the door to open, for the familiar steps in the house. He and Zelika broke their fast avoiding each other's eyes; they knew that if Saliman was not back by noon they would have to decide what they were going to do. They walked to the Healing Houses without speaking, and worked all morning with a furious intensity; more wounded had arrived overnight from II Dara, and the healers were preparing to evacuate the worst hurt to the harbor as soon as possible. Hem spent the morning running errands and assisting the less seriously wounded, until Oslar looked at his drawn face and sternly sent him back to the Bardhouse, insisting he eat a proper meal. Hem met Zelika at the herbalist's, and they slowly walked back to the Bardhouse.

He knew as soon as he opened the door that Saliman had returned: his cloak lay on the bench inside the door, and his sandals underneath it. Hem stared at these objects, hardly daring to believe they were there, but he would know Saliman's shoes anywhere. He felt himself trembling and breaking into a sweat; it was not until that moment that he realized how much he had feared that Saliman was dead. All the weight lifted from his chest: his heart was suddenly winged, soaring with happiness. Forgetting everything else, he ran through the house, shouting Saliman's name; but Saliman was not there.

"He's probably gone to the Ernan or something," said Zelika, when Hem returned, crestfallen. "I'm hungry, let's get some food. We'll see him tonight, I expect."

Oslar had ordered Hem to rest that afternoon, so Zelika returned alone to the herbalist's. But Hem was soon back in the Healing Houses because he couldn't bear the suspense of waiting in the empty Bardhouse. He could feel that something had happened: the atmosphere was charged, and the sense of suspended waiting had given way to an air of frenzied activity. Almost everyone he saw in the streets wore armor, and small groups of people talked in subdued voices in the alleyways, glancing sideways at Hem as he hurried past them. It was a hot, windy day; the dust kicked up in Hem's face, drying out his mouth, and the wind made a low moaning as it swept through the streets. Or was it the wind? He sharpened his hearing; there was a distant noise that made his heart thump in his chest. It did not sound like wind, but something else, although really it was too faint to be sure what it was.

He spent the afternoon helping to lift people onto the litters that were to take them to the harbor. Here in the Healing Houses, the Bards were calm and patient as they always were, no matter what emergency they might have to deal with, and the anxiety that had been mounting in Hem all day subsided in his work. But then Oslar spotted him and sent him home, brooking no disobedience; and so Hem found himself again idle in the Bardhouse, starting up at every noise he heard in the street. Zelika came home as the shadows began to lengthen, but still there was no sign of Saliman.

The children waited in his rooms. The hot wind had died down, so they flung the doors open to the garden and watched the light gently failing outside. This tense, uncertain wait reminded Hem of something; he rummaged through his memory, trying to place it. Ah yes, it was like the time when he and Maerad and Cadvan and Saliman had waited in Nelac's rooms in Norloch as the day darkened, knowing that something had happened, not knowing what it was. The memory obscurely comforted him. Ire was in the garden, a silver glimmer in the shadows under the trees; it sounded as if he were squabbling with the meenah birds, with whom he had a fractious relationship. Hem thought briefly of calling him in, but refrained; all day Ire had been as busy as Hem, and he deserved some play.

At last they heard the outer doors open and close, and then steps outside the room. Hem stopped himself from leaping up, waiting until he stepped into the room, in case it was another false alarm, but it was Saliman. The Bard walked slowly into the room and stopped when he saw the children waiting there. He greeted them in a soft voice, embracing both, and drank some water before he sat down. They watched him in silence, containing their questions. Hem was shocked by the exhaustion on Saliman's face: lines ran from his nose to the corners of his mouth, and he looked older.

"Are you all right?" asked Hem. He felt shy; he wanted to ask Saliman what had happened, but didn't know how.

"I am tired," Saliman answered. "So very tired. And sick at heart. But yes, I am all right."

"But what's happened?" The words seemed to burst out of Zelika. She leaned forward, her eyes sparkling with impatience. "Something has happened, hasn't it? Has II Dara fallen?"

Before he answered, Saliman crossed the room and poured himself a goblet of ruby wine. He offered some to Hem and Zelika, but they refused, wrinkling their noses; neither of them had yet developed a taste for the strong Suderain wines. Saliman sat down, and drank deeply.

"Ah, that's better," he said. "All is not dark, when the tongue is still able to savor such richnesses. You two don't know what you're missing." He smiled, and the lines softened on his face; he seemed briefly more like the normal Saliman.

Hem and Zelika waited tensely, twisting their hands, longing to hear what had happened to him, and yet not wanting to press him. Saliman sipped his wine again, and glanced at the children. "Forgive me," he said. "I have been talking all afternoon, at the Ernan, and I have not slept these past two nights. But I will tell you what has happened – you have a right to know.

"You are right, Zelika: the II Dara Wall has fallen. I have ridden hard to get here; my horse is swift and our forces at the Wall are not completely routed. Even as they retreat, they fight the Black Army every step of the way to Turbansk. Nevertheless, I judge the city will be encircled in a day, or less."

Hem felt as if his heart had been plucked from his chest, leaving in its place a strange hollow. It was the news he had been expecting, but even so it hit hard. He licked his lips: his mouth seemed suddenly as dry as parchment.

"We knew the Wall could not hold out against the forces that were thrown against it, but we still hoped we could hold out longer than we did," said Saliman. "I went there because we had word that Al Ronin, captain of the II Dara Ranks, had been slain, which is grievous news, as he was a great warrior, and we counted on him in the defense of Turbansk. More, the ranks said they were desperate, that they were beating back a foe that came on endlessly, like the waves of an ocean, their strength undiminished by any of our costly victories. I led there a force of three horsed ranks of the Sun Guards – not nearly enough, yet all we could spare, for we also feared that the Black Army may yet surprise us. Imank may have sent a battalion to march north from Baladh, circling the Neera Marshes and returning along the South Road, to strike Turbansk while we spent our strength defending the II Dara Wall. Well." Saliman smiled tiredly. "That is what I would have done, if I were Imank. But there is no word of movement along the South Road, and we must be grateful for the small mercies that are granted us.

"In the battle for the Wall our forces faced the entire might of the Black Army: thousands upon thousands, in ranks so deep beating against the wall that you could not, even from the towers, see the end of them. We had to cover a league of wall, stretching either end into the Neera Marshes, through which an army cannot march, and we had to protect the road, which runs through a gate pierced in the south end. On the east side, we had dug a deep moat and we filled it with stakes, and on the other side of that yet another trench, to prevent the armies reaching the Wall itself.

"For five days, before he was cut down, Al Ronin held back the Black Army. Hundreds died in those five days, but very few of ours. As well as the Sun Guard, Al Ronin commanded Alhadeans and Bilakeans, who are famed archers, and the Cissians, among the fiercest fighters in Edil-Amarandh – in peacetime they are goatherds and metalsmiths, but they delight in the arts of war. Too few against too many, but they had a chance as long as II Dara stood."

Saliman paused and wiped his mouth. "Firstly we heard that Imank ordered ranks to build a great ramp, sloping up to the heights of the II Dara. Al Ronin could not oppose that at first, until they came within bowshot. Imank set a ram manned by dogsoldiers to break the gate, but that was beaten back again and again. The gate is protected not only by rock and iron, but by spells made in the time of the Great Silence, and it is not easily cast down, even with sorceries. But at the end of those five days the moat and trenches were filled with dead, so the oncoming ranks could walk across them to the Wall itself... and from huge catapults they began to cast up ladders made of chains, hooked at one end, which would grapple the wall. That is how Al Ronin died, hewing down a mighty captain from Den Raven as he mounted the II Dara.

"Thus we began to lose fighters, though not as many as the Black Army, and we still beat them back. But though we lost one to their ten, Imank could afford losses much more than we could: our blood was ebbing with each fresh assault, and our enemies numberless. So it was when I came there, with three ranks of the Sun Guard. Still, we might have prevailed for longer. We foiled their attempts to tunnel beneath the Wall – its foundations go very deep and are enchanted against breach – and although hard pressed, we were holding them from swarming over the battlements, and they could not break the gate. Imank even abandoned the building of the ramp after we assaulted it with catapults of magefire, and we counted that a victory..."

Saliman stopped again, and refilled his goblet, glancing somberly at Hem and Zelika, who were both listening in absolute silence.

"Of course, all idea of victory was an illusion," he said, when he was again seated. "We knew that, but we did not know what would happen next. Imank summoned the ranks of child soldiers. And that brought such horror on us that our courage failed us for the first time."

"Child soldiers?" said Zelika sharply.

"Aye," Saliman said softly. "Simply that they were children is bad enough. But these were
our
children. And they came to assault the walls of their own homeland. There were fighters there who were hacked to death by their own sons and daughters, whom they had thought dead, for they could not bring themselves to raise their weapons against them."

Hem stared at Saliman, shocked. "You mean, they just joined the Dark?" he said. "How could they?"

"Nay, Hem, it is not so simple. I guess these children were captured in the assaults on Baladh and the towns and villages of Nazar and Savitir. They are drugged or bewitched: they no longer know their own names or their own kin. And they know neither fear nor mercy. They are cruel beyond imagining, even though some are years younger than you. They fight like maddened creatures... In a time of many evils, I deem this is the greatest. It broke the heart of our defense."