The Lady's Man (45 page)

“The blessings of the Mother be with you.”

It was a dismissal Genivere knew, and she like the others turned to leave. To do as they were ordered. But she didn't want to. She wanted to stay and ask more questions. About Yorik, about the thane and whether he could truly be responsible for having created him, and about how they could possibly fight such a creature. And how they could destroy him.

Annalisse wasn't going to hear her though. She was already deep in conversation with the other two elders, and Genivere realised that she'd probably been like that for a long time. Since well before they'd arrived. Despite her having expected them, the elder hadn't been here just waiting to welcome them home. The elders had probably been here for days, spending all their strength on trying to get their people to safety. And they would probably be here for many more. They didn't have time to speak with a party of rangers returned from a failed mission.

Besides, she had a destination. Her brother Geannalee was with the Rangers of the Order of the Lady. She had to find out if he lived. And if he knew the fate of their parents. She was exhausted. She hadn't slept in ages. Every part of her wanted to fall down and simply lie there. But her heart told her to run. To sprint out of the chamber and dash across the clearing screaming her brother's name.

So she forgot her questions and chased after the others, and by the time they were at the doors she was almost pushing them out of the way. There was no more time for unimportant questions.

Chapter Thirty Three.

Myral held up his hand and called out that they should slow and Yorik immediately had to fight the urge to snap at the wizard. But he did fight it because he knew the wizard was right. The horses could only do so much. And when they had them cantering a quarter of a league and then trotting the next for fifteen hours a day they were close to their limit.

In actual fact they were lucky to have had horses at all. Myral had managed to call three or four from the forests around Hammeral, but none of them were thoroughbreds. They also weren’t used to carrying paladins in armour or running day and night. They were farm horses, more familiar with pulling a plough than galloping. How he would have loved to have had Crysal and Smilla back. But they were now presumably wandering somewhere around the high plateau near the Wind Dragon Falls eating their fill of the long grass.

Yorik was frustrated. He knew they were making the best progress they could. But after two long weeks into their ride it just didn't seem enough.

Partly it was simply that they'd been riding for so long and had met no one. No one who could tell them anything of what was happening in the wider world. The land was mostly jungle and swamp with the trail the only solid ground through it. No one lived in these parts south of the Hammeral forests save for the satyrs, and they kept to themselves and shunned strangers. In fact given the nature of the land they could have ridden right by a dozen villages and never seen them.

In part it was also worry. Because he didn't know if Genivere and the other rangers had survived. Nor how many of his brothers in the Order survived. Or the others of Hammeral he'd met. Myral could tell him little. Only that he'd done what he could for the others at the temple by sending the great birds to find them, and that the elders and the foretellers at Hammeral would have prepared the city for the thane's arrival. They hoped that many, perhaps most would have survived. But day after day as they rode he worried. And all he could do as he rode further and further away from Hammeral and his brothers and the battle, was hope that the sylph knew something. Something that would make this journey worthwhile. But he feared that they wouldn't.

Yorik worried about what awaited them, and the very real chance that it would all be for nothing. That they would finally reach the border and simply be turned away. Myral had told him that it was a possibility a few times. What they were doing was all that they could do, but there was no certainty it would be enough.

The weather wasn't helping his mood either. While it was still summer, the land here was wet. It rained every night, and that was not helping with his recovery. Each morning he awoke stiff and sore and if it came to a fight he doubted he would be ready. His shoulder hurt less now and it moved more freely, but there was still no strength in it.

As they continued their journey Yorik’s frustration and worry grew. All the while that they rode he knew that Mayfall could be doing anything. Killing anyone. He should be there, fighting. Standing by his brothers! Defending the people! Instead he was riding through the middle of nowhere to a meeting with people who might not even want to meet with them. And it would take them two more weeks even at the pace they were maintaining to reach the Land of The Sky, and then assuming everything went as they wanted it to, another month to return. But no matter how many times he asked, Myral said he was doing what he should be doing. Yorik just had to be patient.

So when they slowed to a gentle trot, he held his tongue. It would do no good to snap at him. Instead he gave voice to a question that had started running through his thoughts some leagues back. A question he had asked before and never got a satisfactory answer to.

“Myral, if we can't travel any faster to the Land of The Sky, is there any way we could get a message there faster? A pigeon perhaps?”
If
they could find a pigeon of course and it knew where to go and
if
someone read the message when it got there, or bothered to reply. There were so many
if's
.

“No.” The wizard shook his head firmly. He was probably annoyed that Yorik kept asking him the same question. “Even if we could get a message through to them, the sylph would not respond. They cut off all communications with the outside world long ago. They don't consider others worthy of their time. And they don't like to be annoyed.”

“But when it's a crisis? When cities are being destroyed? When it's an enemy that has destroyed their own land? Surely they'd have to listen?”

“No. They wouldn't.” The wizard turned to stare straight at him. “The sylph aren't like the other people of the world. They're wizards, one and all. Elemental wizards. And the only thing they have ever cared about is becoming more powerful. From birth to death that is the only thing that matters to them.”

“Schooling is about learning their magic. Marriage is about finding a partner who can help them grow in their magic. Work and trade save for the necessities of survival, is only undertaken if it adds to their strength. And even children are only a conduit to extending their strength down through the generations.”

“As a people they are very similar to your Order of the Iron Hand. Save that they don't try and kill one another.”

“A whole people?” Yorik couldn't imagine that.

“All of them. The desire for power is fed to them in their mothers' milk. And in fact – .” Myral looked away suddenly, staring at the distant mountains as he thought about whatever it was he was about to say. “ – When that paladin called you out I thought his magic was remarkably like theirs. It had the same feel to his casting.”

“And you think that …?” Yorik's question died on his lips as he suddenly realised he didn't know what Myral was thinking. But it seemed important somehow.

“That the Iron Hand has been receiving some training in their casting from the sylph.”

Yorik thought about that for a bit, wondering if it could be true, or if it really mattered if it was. Many people in the human realms received training in magic and other arts from other races. It wasn't unusual. Artisans often learned the magical part of their craft from the gnomish. Smiths occasionally studied with the dwarves. It was simply a part of life.

The Order of the Lady of course didn't. No more did any of the other orders save perhaps the Iron Hand. Their magic came from those they followed and they learned it from those who also followed. Much the same as did that of any priest. Only the Iron hand was different. But then they did not have a patron to grant them their magic.

So if the Iron Hand was receiving their training from the sylph it surely didn't matter that much, save that their magic was growing in strength. Or was there more to it than that? Eventually he asked.

“If the sylph are offering training there will be a price. They don't do anything for nothing. And it occurs to me that if the Iron Hand are becoming the power throughout the human realms that others have said they are, the sylph could use that.”

It seemed unlikely to Yorik. Myral had said that the sylph were an insular people. They didn't let others visit their lands and they didn't leave them. There was some trading along the borders, but it was precious little. But there was one thing the Iron Hand could do for them; offer them their services. And they were always happy to overthrow someone's enemy for coin, undertake an assassination or hunt down a fugitive. That was of course assuming that the sylph even had enemies they wanted to kill or fugitives to hunt.

“What is the Land of The Sky like?” Yorik decided to change the subject knowing that there was nothing more that could come of what they had been discussing. Nothing useful anyway.

“Once, centuries before my time, it was said to be very beautiful. A jewel in the world. A high plateau stretching for a hundred and fifty leagues in every direction, covered in grass, wild flowers and gently rolling hills, all nestled in the middle of a giant ring of mountains. It was called the Land of The Sky because the last part of the journey to it was a seemingly endless climb through the foothills. For five or six days you would climb and climb with no end in sight. Many believed the land was actually in the sky.”

“But eight hundred years ago when the thane came he completely destroyed it. The sylph had a dozen great cities, and in the middle of each one he raised a volcano. His intent was to destroy the cities, but the destruction he wrought was far greater. The volcanoes grew and erupted. Ash filled the sky for years. Lava covered the ground. The air became thick and poisonous. The water dried up. And the people died in their millions. They starved and they burnt.”

“When I last walked the land five hundred years ago what was spoken of it was that it had become a land of rocks. Barren and largely dead. That the people who had once been so great scrabbled for whatever food they could grow on the few patches of fertile land that remained. That the cities had not been rebuilt.”

“And now from what I understand, not much has changed. The land is still ruined, the people still broken. But in truth I know little more than you.”

“And the people?”

“Arrogant, powerful wizards and unfriendly without exception. Five hundred years ago I knew a few of them. But none would ever have become friends. Everything about them is of power and prestige. As I said, very similar to your Iron Hand.”

“They came down from their land sometimes to trade. With what had happened to their home they were often in need of food and anything else that could be grown. And they sometimes undertook pilgrimages to far off places in the belief that what they learned there would make them more powerful. But they never really became friends with anyone other than their own kind.”

“Never once did I see them laugh or smile. Share a jest or a kind word. They rode their great white horses, the acornia, and they looked down upon all they met from them.”

“The best that could be said of them was that they were never violent and they were fair in their dealings. It is unfortunately not a lot to say of a people.”

It wasn't a lot at all Yorik thought. And these were the people they were placing their hope in? Still, when there seemed to be no other hope perhaps he shouldn't judge. And in a week or two they would know.

For the present though, as he stared at the grass covered track extending ahead of them into the distance, and heard the easy sound of his horse's breathing, he knew it was time to stop talking again.

“The horses are rested. We should canter again.”

And immediately he said it Yorik pressed his feet into his horse's side, urging her on. There was a long way still to go.

Chapter Thirty Four.

The afternoon was setting on the town of Andalia and with it Genivere knew, would be the final breaths of still more lives. Two, nearly three weeks after the attack on Hammeral and the victims were still dying. Not as many as before – most of those who had been at death's door had already stepped through it – but still the sorrow continued.

And they were far from alone. As Genivere worked all the hours she could in the healers' tents, she heard the stories from the wounded soldiers and the elders who regularly came to bring them the news and tell them how many more casualties to expect.

This new thane was a monster. All thanes were monsters though. Perhaps this one just seemed more terrible because he was the only one they had known during their lives. But he was terrible. He was killing and destroying without an end in sight. It seemed he was simply wandering the world and whenever he felt the desire, tearing another city or town from it. There was no reason she could see in how he chose his targets. It couldn't all be for vengeance. Though he was human and the humans were the most affected by the thane’s destruction.

Three of the six cities of New Vineland were in ruins. Doverion, Ender's Fall and Armitage were no more. And there were reports that many more had been destroyed as well. The dwarves had lost Iron Deep and there were also unconfirmed reports that the Schist Valley had been destroyed. It was only a trading town, but still it was home to some twenty thousand people. But even when the thane didn't go personally to destroy a town or a city, he would send his undead minions. And his armies were growing. With every town he destroyed he gained more soldiers to raise for his army.

Thus far the only elven city to be destroyed was Hammeral, but he had destroyed a dozen more towns throughout the great Hammeral forest, and elves, satyrs and dryads all lay dead in their thousands. Still more were injured and being brought to Andalia.

Andalia was one of half a dozen towns that were acting as refuges for the survivors and infirmaries for the injured. But they were ill-prepared for the task. With nearly two thousand injured needing the attention of the healers and scarcely two hundred healers to tend to them, they were severely stretched.

That could be seen most obviously in the tents themselves. There was no room in the city itself for them to be based. That Genivere understood. But there also wasn't enough canvas to build a proper small city of tents. So what they had were tents made out of any material they could find. Canvas where they were lucky. Hides and bedding where they weren't. And the beds were mostly bales of hay covered with sheets. They allowed the patients to lie above the damp grass, but little more.

They were running low on supplies as well, and there were hundreds of people currently out in the forest gathering the various herbs they needed. But each day they had to go further to find them as the ones nearer to the town were taken. Soon she feared they would run out completely.

Meanwhile the rangers and guards patrolled the forest, keeping watch for the undead, and ready to give warning if and when they should arrive. Everyone knew that it was only a matter of time. Soon they would have to flee again. To scatter in all directions as if the great demon himself were giving chase. And if they weren't fast enough, they would die. Some days Genivere wondered why they hadn't been attacked already. But the truth was surely that the thane had larger targets in his sight. He simply hadn't got around to them. And as long as they hadn't she kept working.

There was so much to do. Normally a healer would see perhaps one patient a week who was badly injured. In times of war that would obviously increase. But this was worse again. It wasn't a war, it was a massacre.

By far the worst part of her work though was that so many of the injured and dead were children. The undead had no respect for age. They killed and maimed the young and the old alike. The demons of disease had no such respect either and they took their share of children as well. They said war was cruel. But this was no war. It was an extermination. And if the thane – if Mayfall – wasn't stopped, sooner or later there would be no people left.

Thus far there was no end in sight. Someone had said that thanes always went away eventually. They weren't defeated or killed, they just went away. It was whispered around the camp fires at night – almost as a prayer. But if that was true there was no sign that this one would do so. And every day as she worked there were more reports of towns and cities being destroyed. Some near, some far away. But all of them left the healers with more work to do. And every day as she tended to her patients she was sure of one thing:

Some would die, some would recover sufficiently to leave her care, but no matter how they left her care always she knew more would arrive to take their places.

The three tents she currently tended held a dozen patients and thirteen cots, and she spent all day and most of the night rushing between them. Sewing up wounds, splinting bones, applying poultices, administering healing draughts and sending all the healing magic she could into the forms of her patients. More often though, the most she could do was ease the pain. The injuries they suffered were often severe. Worse still if it was the undead that had caused them, the wounds were usually unclean as well. They would fester and too often kill her patients.

Then, when her patients passed away there was always a small cadre of people waiting nearby to take them away. Some of them were town guards pressed into duty as porters. Most were family members, too many of them weeping as they carried them away to the priests for a proper service and a burial. The priests and the grave diggers were also busy and there was word that the land that had been set aside for a graveyard was actually starting to run out. No one had ever expected to have to deal with such a catastrophe.

And this was only one town out of six in the region, caring only for the sick and injured from the surrounding towns and the city. The dead weren't being brought to them. They remained where they fell because there were too few to tend to them even after the enemy had left, and in time Genivere feared they would be raised to walk in the thane’s undead army. Only the Mother knew how many had died. Or how many more were going to before this thane left.

As she'd worked, days had turned into nights and the nights had turned into days. She worked until she couldn't work any more, collapsed and then sometime later started work again. One day bled into another and then days bled into weeks. She'd lost her awareness of time and she actually had no idea of what day it was. In that she suspected she was far from alone. Too tired to think of anything more than her work. So she didn't notice it when the flap of the tent was pulled aside.

“Genivere?”

She was tending to the poultices of an injured satyr when she heard the man call her name and at first she didn't think anything of it. People were always calling her name, and her patient needed her attention. His wounds wouldn't kill him, but it would be a long time before he could walk again. A rusty sword had cut through the meat of his thigh almost severing the muscle in half. Though she had managed to stitch most of it back together there would be a lot of healing required.

“Put him on the cot please.”

She didn't turn around, just concentrated on her patient. The one thing she had learnt from these difficult days was that she had to concentrate on one patient at a time. To divide her attention was to risk losing all her patients. It had been a painful lesson to learn.

“There is no patient Little Pea.”

The man's voice was replaced by a woman's and more than that it was a voice she knew. A voice she'd been longing to hear for far too long.

“Mother!”

It was unprofessional and unelven but Genivere couldn't help herself as she turned around, saw her there and then threw herself her mother's arms. And for a moment everything went away. All the pain and fear, all the horror and grief. Even the sounds of people sobbing that was the song of the town. It was just so good to have her mother back. To have her brother standing there beside her as well, resplendent in his gold. Tears of happiness ran down her cheeks and she simply didn't care.

Of course she'd known that her brother lived. When she'd visited the rangers in the town they'd told her that Geannalee lived. That he had survived the fall of Hammeral. But he hadn't been with them. He'd been out doing his duty, helping the survivors. Bringing the wounded to the towns where the healers had set up, bringing the rest to the other small towns. And so she hadn't seen him. And she'd worried that he was out there somewhere, in danger. As for their parents, she'd had no answer. Like so many others they were just missing. They could have been dead in the city. They could have been in any of the surrounding towns. She just hadn't known. So to finally have them back was a blessing.

But it wasn't a blessing.

It took her a moment to realise that. To realise that her brother was injured, hiding it well but by the looks of things putting all of his weight on one leg because the other didn't work so well. That her mother was hurt as well. Underneath her robe she had bandages strapped around her middle. Genivere could feel them through the cotton as she held her. And then there was the look in their eyes. Happiness, but sadness too. Pain and sorrow. Grief. And that told her one thing. One terrible thing.

“Where's father?”

She asked though she already knew the answer. It was written in their faces. In the tears that started falling down her mother's cheeks. In the way that her brother had to look away. It was a long time before they could answer her, and when they did she didn't want them to.

“He fell.”

The words came out of her mother's throat like a pronouncement of doom. And they were just that.

“We escaped Hammeral but then the undead found us in Tyber Vale. We had to run again but this time we weren't fast enough.”

“Your father and the other men of the village bought us some time. But they paid for it.”

Her mother carried on, slowly. Haltingly telling her the sad story, breaking every so often to let her tears fall and the sobs break loose. And Genivere cried with her. If she could have she would have chosen never to have heard another word about it. No one should have to know how their loved ones had died. Especially when they had fallen to violence. But she had to hear. She had to know.

Her mother's story was brutal and painful. But it was also a story that had been repeated time and again of late. In fact almost word for word. Many of her patients had said it to her. And Genivere knew even as she wept that it would be repeated a great many more times before this nightmare was ended. But worse than that she knew that she didn't even have cause to complain. Not compared to them. Everyone all around her had their own version of the same tale. Many had worse. Many had lost parents, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters and even children. Some had lost them all. Compared to many she was actually fortunate.

But she didn't feel fortunate as she stood there holding her mother and crying. She felt broken.

A piece of her life had been taken from her. The rock who she had always known was there to hold her when things went wrong was gone. It was as though someone had cut one of her legs out from under her and it was difficult not to fall to the ground and cry out.

Genivere wanted to break down there and then and simply cry. But she couldn't. She had patients to tend to. Many who had suffered far worse losses, and all of whom needed her help. So somehow she didn't. She held it all in, and when her brother finally took her mother away back to the rangers where she could at least get some food and shelter, Genivere returned to her work. The only concession she would allow herself to make to her pain was to pray to the Mother that this nightmare would soon end. And to let the tears flow freely down her cheeks.

But as she worked through her pain, she realised one thing. She had just become one of her patients – an object of pity. As she sorrowed for them so they could sorrow for her. There was no shortage of sorrow. It was the only thing they had an abundance of.