"A Song for Arbonne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

CHAPTER 18

The battle that ended Gorhaut and Arbonne as the world had known them started a day too soon. In the tumultuous wake of the aborted parley by the lake the nearest companies of the two armies engaged, and once that happened there was nothing, short of an actual manifestation of a goddess or a god in the sky above, that could have separated them. Whatever advantages of tactics and knowledge of the terrain that Bertran de Talair might have been able to call into play, given time to prepare, were swept away in the tumult of spontaneously begun fighting that turned, almost immediately, into headlong, screaming chaos.

In such a battle, Blaise knew, enmeshed in the fighting nearest the lake, sheer numbers would almost always tell. The smaller army could only have a chance if the larger one was cowardly, or poorly led, or composed of mercenaries who might be prone to cut their losses early.

None of these things were true in the valley by Lake Dierne. He had learned, in most of a year here south of the mountain passes, that the men of Arbonne were never to be lightly dismissed—and they were fighting now for their country and on their own land. Even so, the warriors of Gorhaut had been raised and trained in a single-minded purity that exalted Corannos of Battles as the highest incarnation of the god, squarely in the tradition of the Ancients who had come to conquer, and whose arch loomed west of this valley like a brooding presence.

It had always been that way in the nations of the north, in Gorhaut, Valensa, Gotzland. The southern countries had no such fixed, warlike obsession in their make-up, and Arbonne worshipped a goddess above the god. All of these things involved nuances and subtleties to which he would have been oblivious a year ago, Blaise knew—but the primal inferno of a battlefield was no place for subtleties. They didn't matter here. Weapons mattered, and training, and the will of the men who wielded them. And, in the end, the numbers on either side.

It would take a miracle, he thought, immersing himself in battle that winter afternoon like a man with a bitter thirst to slake. Blaise had always given Corannos his faith and he was coming, amazingly, to have some sense of the very different power of Rian, but he still didn't believe in miracles. The men and women he knew—and he included himself in this—were simply not deserving of such holy intercession. He hewed and slashed with his sword, a mortal man dealing in death, knowing that he was killing men he'd fought beside at Iersen Bridge and many times before. It was only with an effort of will that he was able to keep the meaning of that from breaking through to undo him entirely.

Square on in that windswept valley the armies of two countries crashed into each other in the clear light of midwinter in Arbonne and Blaise knew that the weight of numbers was going to push them back. Back to the lake, to the edge of the castle moat, to the ending of their lives. Courage and skill and the rightness of a cause were sometimes not enough. They were seldom enough, he thought, tasting that truth like poison in his mouth: Corannos and Rian had shaped a world in which this was so. He was aware of death hovering in the blue brightness of the sky, preparing to descend, to cloak the world in darkness.

He had a sudden, searing image in his mind of night fires on Rian's Isle when their army was destroyed. He saw Signe de Barbentain, small, elegant, proud, bound and burning on one of his father's pyres, her mouth open in a soundless scream, her white hair in flames. A rage rose up in him then, a fury of denial, and the numbness that had fallen upon him like a blanket of fog when Ranald died was finally pushed away.

Blaise looked around, as if seeing the field clearly for the first time and in doing so he pushed past his inward griefs and accepted the role that lay waiting for him, the burden that had been his from the moment he'd claimed a crown.

He was commanding the left flank; with him were Rudel and Fulk and the barons and corans of southern Arbonne, including Mallin de Baude. Bertran and Valery held the centre, mostly with the men of Talair, and Thierry de Carenzu, with the corans of the east, was on the right. As best he could tell—eyes narrowed in the sunlight—they were still holding ground on all fronts. He could see Ademar in the forefront of the Gorhaut army, not far from Bertran in fact, though there were hundreds of men between them. Galbert was beside the king, a black mace in his right hand. Even as Blaise watched, his father leaned over in his saddle, huge, powerful, to hammer the mace into the skull of an Arbonnais pikeman. The man didn't even have a chance to scream as his head was crushed. He crumpled to the earth like so much spilled grain.

Men died in battle. People one had known and loved died in battles. You could not let that make you falter. They were holding ground, but they were not going to do so for much longer. Blaise, in the grip of a sudden clarity, made his decision.

And that same swift clear-headedness made him understand that this, too, was one of the things that came with the role on the world's stage that he'd claimed for himself: one gave orders in a battle such as this that could shape the destinies of nations.

It was true, it was about to be made true even now, and Blaise realized that he would have to accept that weight because his only other alternative was to withdraw into the shadows and die, betraying all those who believed in him. He made his choice then, and prepared himself to answer for it before the god when his hour came.

Drawing back sharply from the crush at the front of the lines he wheeled his horse over towards Fulk de Savaric, gesturing urgently. Fulk saw him coming and drew back as well.

"We can't do this much longer!" Rosala's brother shouted over the roar of combat. A man beside them fell, dropping his sword, clutching with both hands at an arrow in his throat.

"I know! Listen to me! Pull your men back and try to flank around. We'll hold as best we can. Get in behind Ademar if you can! Drive towards Bertran."

"You can't hold here without us!" Fulk screamed. There was blood on his face, dripping into his yellow beard. Blaise couldn't tell if it was Fulk's own blood or someone else's.

"Have to try!" he shouted. "Nothing else is going to break this up, and we can't keep fighting twice our numbers face to face."

He had another thought then and looked away from Fulk towards the front again. He saw that Rudel was looking back at him, waiting. They had fought beside each other often enough; it wasn't really a great surprise. He saw his friend arch his eyebrows in silent enquiry, and Blaise nodded his head.

"Do it!" he cried, and knew that Rudel understood. His friend turned to a mercenary beside him and spoke a one word command.

A moment later there came a fierce, ragged shout from Fulk's men of Savaric as over their heads, gripped by that coran beside Rudel, the banner of the kings of Gorhaut rose up to fly beside the standard of Arbonne. Two of us under the same banner, Blaise thought. Will it matter?

A moment later he realized, with a quickening of his heart, that it might.

"Look!" Fulk shouted, pointing.

Blaise had already seen.

"To me!" he roared, pulling at his horse's reins, driving towards the standard Rudel had raised. "In the name of Gorhaut, to me, men of Garsenc!"

And as he screamed it at the top of his voice, he saw that there were indeed corans of his family estate, from the company behind his father and Ademar, pulling back from the fight in the centre and making their way, swords uplifted in salute, towards him.

Ranald's last shouted words had been heard, Blaise realized. And these men would have watched one of their own, Bergen of Garsenc, felled by a Portezzan as he prepared to ride back to them. And sure, surely, there would be those among the corans he had grown up among who had not been filled with joy at the prospect of burning women and mutilating helpless men.

He saw his father turn, alerted by a change in the sounds behind him. Galbert visibly checked at what he saw, then his own magnificent, stentorian voice rang out over the battlefield like the voice of doom, of a god, "Stop those men!" he trumpeted. "There are traitors among us!"

Confusion reigned. Some corans turned obediently in the Gorhaut ranks and began slashing at others who, moments before, had been fighting beside them. In front of Blaise the warriors of Gorhaut turned towards the centre to see what was happening, and in the respite shaped by that brief hesitation the men of Arbonne pushed forward beside Rudel's hard-bitten mercenaries, fighting now beneath the incongruous banner of the kings of Gorhaut. Blaise saw Mallin de Baude drive forward, first man into the gap.

"Go quickly now!" he cried over his shoulder to Fulk. "We have a chance!"

With no more words spoken, Fulk de Savaric barked orders to his captains and moments later—more swiftly than Blaise could have hoped—the men of Savaric had peeled back and begun swinging south towards the lake in a desperate attempt at flanking around.

It was going to have to be swift, Blaise realized grimly, as nearly half the men in their sector melted away. Rudel looked back at him, grasped what was happening and, improbably, grinned.

"It this some sort of vengeance upon me?" he cried, leaning over in his saddle towards Blaise. "For youthful sins I have long forgotten?"

"What else could possibly be guiding me now?" Blaise shouted back, moving his horse up beside his friend. Rudel laughed aloud. Then he stopped laughing, for the warriors of Gorhaut, seeing empty space open up before them and the numbers of their foes suddenly diminished, returned, with a collective cry and a new urgency, to their own assault.

After that there was little chance to do so much as look up, let alone assert leadership on any grand scale. Battles were always like this at their peak, breaking down into islands of desperately close combat, the screams and the sweaty press of men and horses, the living and dying and dead, preventing any chance at grasping an overall picture. Blaise lost sight of Mallin. He knew Bertran must be holding in the centre, or they would by now have been under hopeless pressure from that side. He knew this had to be true, but he couldn't spare a moment to look up and see.

The world shrank to the smallest, bloodiest dimensions, to a sword lifting and falling, the scream of a dying horse, the jarring impact of his blade on armour or the different sucking feel as it bit into flesh, an awareness of Rudel on his left side and another man, a mercenary he didn't know beside him on the right. When that man fell, moments later, another coran pushed forward to take his place. It was Hirnan of Baude, and Blaise belatedly understood that they were guarding him. That he was no longer just one of the captains here. He was the man in whose name the banner above them was flying.

That was the moment, really, when Blaise was made aware of what being a king might entail. The knowledge came to him on that desperate battlefield as a weight and an exaltation, both. The rash folly he had begun in Tavernel last summer and then continued in the fall—claiming a crown at the Lussan Fair—became, in that valley north of Talair, something tangible and fully incarnate for him.

A man with an axe appeared in front of him on a dark grey horse; Rudel Correze, with an elegant, almost casual movement in the saddle, slid his sword into the man's throat between armour and helm and Blaise watched him fall. Hirnan immediately drove his horse forward to cut off the space in front of Blaise.

They were guarding him, he understood, at risk of their own lives.

In that instant, utterly calm in the midst of wild battle, with a dead man trampled into the ground at his feet, Blaise de Garsenc came into his true awareness of power. On a field of death, fighting his countrymen on the day his father had killed his brother, Blaise realized that he really did know what he wanted for Gorhaut, and that he thought he could achieve it if given but half a chance.

He did not expect, pushing forward between Rudel and Hirnan, feeling his horse's hooves unavoidably trample the body below, to live long enough to do anything about it.

Later he would remember how that last bleak thought had come to him even before he heard Rudel, his companion on so many battlefields, speak a malediction of bitter ferocity, and Blaise, looking over to the west, saw what his friend had seen and felt something colder than winter enter his heart with the awareness of treachery and of the final, inexorable revenge of the past.

On the forested ridge of land west of the valleys a company of men could be seen at the edge of the trees. A very large company, arrayed in precise rows, well armed and armoured. Above their heads were flying not one but two banners. One was a green device Blaise had come to know well in Arbonne. The other was that of the kings of Gorhaut.

Urté de Miraval had come to war, and their worst nightmares were made real as those grim, meticulous ranks began to move down the slope. Fulk de Savaric, Blaise saw, had somehow managed to fight his way around by the shore of the lake. He and his men had turned north and were even now poised to turn and strike at Ademar's centre from behind.

It didn't matter any more. They were going to be annihilated, their backs completely exposed to the men of Miraval, who were gathering speed now as they swept into the valley. If Fulk turned to face Urté they would be equally helpless before Ademar's corans. Blaise had sent those men to the worst sort of death.

With their own soon to follow. Blaise looked a long way over then—there seemed to be a respite here on their flank as men in both armies turned to see what was happening—and he picked out the fiercely battling figure of Bertran de Talair. Once he had thought the man no more than a lord who debased his rank by consorting with singers and frivolously pursuing any woman who came under his blue gaze. These things were true, there was no gainsaying them, but there was nothing in the man he saw just then that could have been called less than lordly as Bertran fought for his land in the face of betrayal and what would have to be the knowledge, bitter as poison, that Urté de Miraval was the source of their undoing.

With a horrified fascination—the way one watches a coiled snake before it strikes—Blaise saw the corans of Miraval, fifteen hundred of them, sweep down from their ridge behind the majestic figure of the duke. He saw them come up beside the first of Fulk's wheeling, scrambling men, swords and spears and axes uplifted and levelled and poised.

And he saw them go straight past those desperate men, no horse or man of Urté's company so much as breaking stride, to crash, with a sound and an impact that seemed to shake the earth, full into the rear of the army of Gorhaut.

In the instant before that impact, just as he realized, with a wild surging in his heart, exactly what was happening, Blaise heard his father's voice rise up again—to tower like a presence over the valley, crying the name of the god in his need. There was no answer though, no reply from Corannos in the cold blue sky. Only the huge thunder of hooves on hard earth and the screams of terrified men as the racing corans of Miraval smashed into the rear of Ademar's men, with the warriors of Savaric turning swiftly to join them and Bertran's men coming forward from the other side, roaring in exultation, to pincer them mercilessly.

"He fooled them!" Rudel screamed in Blaise's ear. "He fooled them completely!" It was true, Blaise saw: the disruption in the Gorhaut ranks caused by the first Garsenc defections earlier had turned into utter chaos. Corans of Garsenc Castle, men he had known all his life, were joining with Fulk de Savaric now, closing in upon Ademar's own guards even as he watched.

"Come on!" Blaise cried. In front of them the men on their flank were falling back in panic, fearing to be cut off. Blaise drove his horse recklessly forward into the gap between the armies. It seemed to him as if something oppressive had been lifted from his shoulders, a weight from the darkness of the past. He felt light, invulnerable, and he wanted Ademar. He didn't even look back to see if anyone was following him. He knew now that they would be; he was their leader, and a chance, a hope, a promise like a lantern's glow seen from afar in a night forest, had appeared for them where none could ever have been foreseen.

He was driving in to the centre, straight towards Ademar, and so was actually quite close when he saw Duke Urté de Miraval meet the king of Gorhaut in the midst of the roiling tumult.

Ademar feels as if he might actually choke in the heat of his fury. It is hard to breathe. Even with the chill of the winter afternoon he is sweltering in his armour and helm. He knows it is rage that is doing this to him. He is almost dizzied by wrath. First the Garsenc betrayals: it has always been the de Garsenc who have balked him, he thinks, slashing savagely at a Miraval foot-soldier, almost severing the man's head with the blow. Swearing, he drags his sword free. He cannot believe, he cannot believe, that with victory so easy, so assured, those Garsenc corans have been mad enough to turn upon their own ranks. Surely any sane man with a sense of self-preservation would have known better than to rally to that doomed pretender's pennon!

That was before he realized that Fulk de Savaric—another traitor, another man who ought to have been by his side! — had somehow managed to bring his company around behind him. There had been some real danger there, and Ademar was snapping urgent commands when one of his captains pointed triumphantly upwards to the west, and the king of Gorhaut, looking there, had felt his choler recede, eased and cooled by something near to joy. He had never been afraid, he was not a man inclined to fears, but with the sight of the Miraval corans on that ridge beneath the banner of Gorhaut, Ademar laughed aloud, tasting the sweetness to come.

He had a few moments to think that way, to watch the well-trained men of Duke Urté start smoothly down the slope, gaining speed, bringing the end of this war with them and the final exaltation of Gorhaut.

Then it all went wrong; wildly, desperately wrong.

There was one moment, when Urté de Miraval whipped his warhorse straight past the corans of Savaric, when Ademar did know fear—just for an instant. Then he felt the impact of those thundering Miraval horsemen as they smashed into the rear of his ranks, driving men back before them like so many helpless children.

Now, buffeted in the midst of a nightmare chaos, rage is foaming like a river in flood through the king of Gorhaut. Ademar hears his High Elder trumpet his call to the god and he curses in his heart the very name of Galbert de Garsenc who has brought him to this, who persuaded him that the duke of Miraval, whose overtures to them in the past few days were direct and explicit, was a necessary man to enlist in their cause, to act as first regent of Arbonne after their conquest.

It was a trap. It is clear now that everything Urté did was a trap, and they are in the jaws of it, between the corans of Talair and Miraval, with Fulk de Savaric and the renegades of Garsenc coming hard against them. Ademar lashes his horse westward, screaming in fury, and as men fall back before him he comes swiftly up to the man he needs to kill now, right now, immediately, before this battle turns hopelessly against them. He is aware, vaguely, that his own corans have also fallen back, that a ring of men has formed around the two of them, as if even in the midst of war there is a sense that this combat must take place. And so Ademar of Gorhaut begins his second single-challenge of this day.

Wordlessly, for he is beyond words now and none could be heard in any case, he swings his sword in a huge, sweeping arc towards the helmeted head of the duke of Miraval. He misses, as Urté, unexpectedly quick for a man of his size and past sixty years of age, ducks beneath the blade. A second later Ademar rocks wildly in the saddle as he absorbs a colossal blow on his own helm. He feels the world go momentarily black. His helmet has been knocked askew; he cannot see. There is a sticky, warm running of blood down the side of his face.

Roaring like a man beset by furies, Ademar hurls away his shield and rips his helm off with both hands, feeling a tearing and then a fierce pain at his left ear. He throws the helmet at de Miraval's face and then the king of Gorhaut follows that up with the hardest blow with a sword he has ever delivered in all his days.

The descending blade catches the armour of the duke just where it shields neck and shoulder and it drives straight down through the mesh, biting deeply into flesh. Ademar sees, through the blurring and darkening of his own vision, how the duke of Miraval lurches heavily over to one side in his saddle, and knowing the cursed, deceiving old man is falling, is as good as dead already, he rips free his blade, nonetheless, to blot him out of life.

The king of Gorhaut never does see the arrow that kills him.

The arrow that comes down out of the empty heavens above to take him in the eye—exactly as his own father was killed two years ago among the ice and the piled bodies by Iersen Bridge.

The king of Gorhaut, dead instantly, never does see that the shaft of that arrow is a deep crimson hue, like blood. Nor does he ever realize, as others do soon after, coming up to where the dead king lies on the ground beside the mortally wounded figure of Urté de Miraval, that the feathers with which that arrow has been fletched are—a thing without known precedent—the feathers of an owl, crimson-hued as well.

Men see these things and cannot understand them, nor can they comprehend whence that terrifying, death-dealing arrow might have been loosed, to have fallen, as it truly seems, straight down upon the king from the sky. Corans in both armies can be seen to be making the warding sign against darkness and the unknown.

The king of Gorhaut is dead of a crimson arrow fallen from the heavens, fletched with the feathers of an owl. Even the warriors of Gorhaut know what bird is sacred to Rian. The tale of an immortal goddess's vengeance for her servants defiled and slain begins to sweep immediately across the valley. It will not stop there. The story has a long way to travel. Such tales, of the deaths of kings, always do.

After that it became easy, in fact. Easier than it ought to have been, Blaise thought. At Iersen Bridge, King Duergar had died yet Gorhaut had still prevailed on a bitter field. The death of a king need not mean utter disarray among the ranks of his army.

That afternoon, though, it did. Blaise could have offered many reasons why, and any and all of those reasons might have been a part of it, but the truth—brilliantly clear in the afternoon light—was that the army of Gorhaut was undone from the time Urté de Miraval appeared against them and that red arrow came down to kill their king.

Blaise, battling in towards Bertran, began to recognize individual men in both armies nearer to the centre of the fighting. Sunset, he had said to Ademar. He had been denied that battle after all. Looking around, he remembered that there was someone else on this field he wanted for his own. Then he saw that man, some distance away, and realized that this, too, was going to be denied him.

Bertran de Talair came up to the Portezzan, Borsiard d'Andoria, on a tummock of grass in the midst of the sideslipping centre of the battle. It was clear that words were exchanged, but Blaise was too far away to hear them. Then he watched Bertran, who had set out on the road of a fighter more than twenty years ago after Aelis de Miraval had died in her husband's castle, dispatch the lord of Andoria with a precision that almost made a mockery of the notion of single combat. Two blows on the forehand, a feint, and then, slipping past the parry, a straight-ahead thrust that took Borsiard in the throat. It was more an execution than a duel, and when it was over Blaise's first thought was that Lucianna had just been widowed again.

His second thought, as he saw the Andorians begin, predictably, to throw down their weapons and hastily submit themselves as prisoners to the nearest of Bertran's men, was that he had something to do now that was going to be harder than any combat had been. He looked quickly around for Rudel and realized that his friend was no longer by his side. He had no time to wonder about that. Even as he watched, the battle of Lake Dierne was becoming a slaughter.

And he had to stop it. Stop it, even though the men of Arbonne could see the severed heads spitted on pikes at the back of the Gorhaut ranks, could still see what a hideous ruin had been made of the singer named Aurelian, and would all be carrying within them anguished images of women burning through the north of their land. They would not be inclined to clemency and moderation in this moment when certain defeat had turned into victory. Every man in the army of Arbonne would know what his fate and that of his family would have been had Gorhaut triumphed here.

Bertran was going to be no help to him now, Blaise saw. The duke had turned from his ruthless dispatching of Borsiard and, moving straight past the surrendering Portezzans, was cutting a deadly swath through the nearest men of Gorhaut. Valery, beside him, was doing exactly the same thing.

Urging his horse after them, Blaise lifted his voice over the screams of the dying and the fierce, wild shouts of the corans of Arbonne: "Enough!" he cried. "Bertran, it is enough!"

Valery slowed, and turned. The duke did not hear him or, if he did, paid no heed at all. Over to his left, behind the Gorhaut centre, Blaise saw Fulk de Savaric lift his head to his cry, raise a hand in response, and then turn to relay urgent orders to his men. The corans of Miraval were still attacking, driving in to meet Bertran, with panic-stricken soldiers of Gorhaut spinning and wheeling between them, implacable foes on all sides now, and men from their own ranks gone over to their enemies.

Blaise came up to the nearest of the Garsenc corans, the ones who had rallied to him when Rudel first raised the banner. "No more killing!" he ordered the nearest of them. "Make them throw down their weapons! They won't be killed if they do!" He was almost certain that was true, but not entirely so. There was a mood in the army of Arbonne that was near to being out of control.

He moved on, churning in the wake of the duke of Talair. He understood very well what had happened to Bertran, how battle-fury could overmaster the most clear-sighted of men—and he also knew that Bertran de Talair had more reason than a man should ever need to be killing men of Gorhaut just now.

In the end it was Thierry de Carenzu, over on the right flank, nearest the severed heads and the maimed, dead troubadour, who had the horns sounded to put a halt to the slaughter of men.

It was Thierry who did it, Blaise would always remember that; he himself was of Gorhaut, he could not have halted the army of Arbonne that day.

Even Bertran pulled up his horse when he heard the high clear sweet notes of those horns rising above the valley. It was music of a sort, among the dying and the dead. Blaise, forcing his way forward, was finally able to catch up with him.

"Bertran stop, you must stop. These are only soldiers now. Farmers and villagers. Ademar is dead, it is over!" The duke of Talair turned then to look at him and Blaise was sobered and chilled by what he saw in the other man's eyes.

"But I did not kill him," Bertran said slowly, as if in a trance. There was something terrible in the words.

Drawing a deep breath, Blaise said carefully, "Nor did I, with as much cause, perhaps. It must not be allowed to matter, Bertran, for either of us. We have won. And look, the men of Garsenc are forcing the others to surrender."

It was true. The soldiers of Gorhaut, the crusading army of the god, could be seen throwing down their weapons even as they spoke. Blaise saw Thierry riding towards them. He shouted as he approached: "We must not kill unarmed men, Bertran."

"Will you tell me why? I seem to have forgotten." Bertran's eyes were still wild, lost.

"No you haven't," said Valery from behind his cousin. They turned to him; his own features were calm again, though Blaise could see that that control was costing Valery a great deal. "You haven't forgotten at all. You just want to forget. So do I. Oh, Bertran, so do I, but if we do that we become what we have just defeated."

Blaise had said the same thing once, in the serenity of a council chamber. This was a battlefield, and there was a kind of madness in the blue eyes of the man Valery was addressing. Bertran stared coldly for a long moment at his cousin. Then Blaise saw him shake his head several times, as if trying to slip free of something. He understood; he understood better than Bertran could have known, how hard it was to move past battle-rage to anything else at all.

But when Bertran turned back to him and to Thierry beside him, Blaise saw that his expression was one he knew.

"Very well," said the duke of Talair, "we will accept their surrender. There is a last thing that is still to be done, though it might grieve you, Blaise, I don't know." He paused only briefly. "Where is the High Elder of Gorhaut?"

Amazingly, Blaise had managed to push his father from his mind; or perhaps, given all that had now broken into fragments in the world, it wasn't so amazing after all. He turned towards the knot of men west of them, and standing in their midst—unhorsed but towering above even the tallest man there—he saw his father.

Galbert had removed his helm, or had had it taken from him. He stood bareheaded in the light of late afternoon. There was blood on his face and on his blue robe. A space had been cleared around him and, looking, Blaise realized belatedly where Rudel had gone. His friend was standing with Galbert inside that space, sword drawn, calmly levelling it at the man who, a little more than half a year ago, had offered him a quarter of a million in gold to kill Bertran de Talair.

This was, Blaise understood finally, one more score being settled, as the sun moved west in the winter sky. He wondered why his father had not killed himself rather than be given over in this fashion to his enemies. It was only a brief thought though, that one. Galbert was not a man to take such a way out, and it was, in any event, an action forbidden by the god.

It seemed to have grown quiet in the valley. Some clouds appeared in the northwest. He watched them move across the sun and then away. It was colder now, late in the day, and in the aftermath of so much exertion. It seemed to be over though; the clash of weapons had stopped. Men were moaning, crying out in pain from many parts of the field. That would go on a long time, Blaise knew. He shivered.

"I have a cloak for you." It was Hirnan. Blaise turned to look at the Arbonnais coran who had been guarding him all afternoon. They had gone to Rian's Island in the sea once, in springtime, to fetch a poet back. It had begun there; for Blaise it seemed to have begun there with the High Priestess in the wood, the dark hollows of her eyes, the white owl on her shoulder.

After a moment he nodded his head and Hirnan draped a heavy cloak of a dark purple hue over Blaise's shoulders. Blaise wondered where he'd got it; purple was the colour of kings. He had a suspicion though, a guess as to whence that cloak had come. And that thought made him turn for a moment, away from his father in the ring of swords, to look briefly at Thierry, and then away from him and all the others, back towards the isle in the lake where the women were.

It was just possible, now that the fighting had stopped, to make out individual figures in the valley across the water. Standing with others on the northern shore of the isle, Ariane could see her husband; from the way he sat his horse it seemed he was all right. Not far from Thierry she watched Hirnan of Baude lay the purple cloak she had entrusted to him over Blaise de Garsenc's shoulders, and she began to cry.

There was a great deal of weeping taking place now; they did not yet know how many had died, or who. The countess was not with them here on the strand; she had joined the priestesses and the priests in the temple for a service of thanksgiving. Ariane knew she ought to be with them, but her thoughts just now, since the blowing of the horns, were entirely of this world.

The small boats were crossing continuously back and forth across the choppy water; they had been doing so all through the battle. The last messenger had told them that the king of Gorhaut was dead, of a crimson arrow in the eye. No one knew who had shot that arrow, the priest said, kneeling on the sands of the goddess. The feathers, he said, had been those of an owl. The arrow had dropped straight down from the sky.

He had also told them that Urté de Miraval, who had saved them in the end, despite everything, was dying, if he was not already dead. And these last tiding, for Ariane, meant more than they did to anyone else on the isle or, indeed, anyone else alive.

They meant that the term of an oath she had kept since the end of her childhood was over, a secret she had sworn, to keep was hers to offer to the world. And it was because of this that she was weeping on that shore, looking north to the valley, at the figure of her husband in his red surcoat and the tall man cloaked in purple beside him, and at the third, smaller man with the two of them, the one who had, so many years ago, surprised a travelling party among the elm trees she could see even now beside the arch to the west.

She moved away from the others on the strand, withdrawing into memory. There was another boat coming with even newer tidings now; the other women moved anxiously towards it. Ariane walked a distance west instead and stood alone, gazing at the other shore, the one nearest Miraval.

It had been winter then, too, she remembered, that night twenty-three years ago, with a rain wind lashing the trees and lake when she came to that shore in the dark of night. Twenty-three years, and oh, it was as yesterday if she let her mind go back. It was as fierce and hard and terrible as if she were standing there now, thirteen years old, an oath newly sworn, sobbing wildly with grief and terror as she stood on that strand in the shelter of the signal hut.

She had been a child when that night had begun. A quick, curious, overly indulged young girl. She had not been young any longer when that long night was done and she watched the pale sun finally come up across the lake and listened to water dripping mournfully from the trees all around.

She had kept her promise. All these years she had kept the promise sworn to her cousin Aelis, whom she had loved. She could see herself so clearly even now: the thin, shivering girl riding in a wild storm, white face and black hair lost in the darkness except when the lightning flashed. And she had been crying, crying in the cruel lashing of the rain. She was crying again now, all these long years after, weeping for innocence lost, for the dead of that night and the awful burden she had been given then and had carried all these years.

After a long time Ariane wiped her eyes and squared her shoulders and turned away from that western shore and its weight of memory. She was the duchess of Carenzu, queen of the Court of Love in Arbonne, a woman of power in the world, and there was a great deal to be done. Starting with the ending of a silence. Aelis, she thought, whispered it to herself actually; only the name, nothing more than that, realizing as she did so that it was a kind of letting go. That almost brought her tears again, but she held them back this time.

She went along the curving path to the temple and waited there for the slow, beautifully chanted service to come to an end. Then, after it was done, in the privacy of a small room beside the dome, with a necessary economy of words but as much gentleness as she could command amid the fevered emotions of that day, she told the first person who needed to know.

Afterwards, going back to the strand alone, she had herself rowed across the water into the wind, wrapping herself in her crimson cloak against the chill at the end of day, and once ashore she went looking for the second person who had to be told before the whole world knew.

He had left the valley by then, they told her, and so, with time only for a brief embrace of her husband and a whispered word, she took horse to go after him. On the way, as she realized where it was he had gone, where she was following, she began to cry again, unable to help herself, the tears cold on her cheeks as the sun sank lower in the west, red as a fire.

Blaise had gone with Bertran and Thierry to where Urté de Miraval lay dying on the ground, a folded cloak under his head and another one, heavy and lined with fur, covering his body. Urté was very pale, and Blaise saw at a glance that the cloths they had used to try to stanch his bleeding were soaked through. He had seen this before; it would not be long.

Urté was still conscious, though, and there was a hard glint of triumph in his eyes. Thierry hesitated beside him and then stepped carefully back and away so that Bertran de Talair could stand alone next to Urté. The silence that followed was taut as a drawn bowstring.

Another hesitation—nothing was being done easily here, Blaise knew—and then Bertran knelt beside the older man.

"We have won," he said calmly. "Your decision to join us after all was what turned the battle."

Urté de Miraval laughed then, a terrible sound, and the movement started another flowing of blood. In obvious pain he shook his head. "After all? You don't understand, do you? There was no decision to make. We staged that scene in Barbentain when I walked out."

Blaise felt his mouth fall open. He closed it with a snap. He heard Thierry de Carenzu make a small sound.

"We?" said Bertran.

"The countess and I. I advised her the night before to name you leader of the army. We agreed that I would storm from the room and contact Ademar the next day."

"Oh, sweet Rian, I don't believe it." It was Thierry, the words like a prayer.

"Why not?" said the dying man, prosaically. "We were going to be outnumbered, we had to devise some trap for them. It seems that it took two of the older generation to do it. The younger ones didn't have any ideas at all, did you?" He did not smile.

There was another silence.

"None at all," said Bertran at length. "I am astonished the countess didn't tell me."

"I asked her not to," Urté said. "I told her you might alter your strategy, knowing what was coming. Make a move that might have alerted them that something was amiss. That was the reason I gave her."

"It wasn't really the reason, was it?"

Urté de Miraval did smile then. "Of course it wasn't," he said.

Bertran slowly shook his head. "As it happens, I had no strategies today. The battle started too soon."

"I know. That is why we were late."

Silence again. The westering sun sent a reddened light along the valley. Urté made a sudden, wry face that Blaise knew was that of a strong man wrestling with great pain.

"What shall I say to you?" asked Bertran de Talair.

A gasp that might have been laughter again. "Spare me," Urté whispered. But a moment later Blaise saw him turn his head a little so he was looking directly at Bertran. Urté opened his mouth and then closed it, as if wrestling with something inwardly, but then, very clearly, he said, "I did not kill her. Or the child."

Bertran became absolutely still, his face white as the dying man's.

"I took the child from her," Urté said, his eyes holding Bertran's, "after she told me… what she told me. I took it downstairs to the kitchen where there was a fire. It was very cold, there was a storm that night. You weren't here, you will not remember. I had the priestess thrown out of the castle. I left the child with the women in the kitchen. I didn't want Aelis to have him… after what she'd said, and I wasn't going to rear him as my own. I might have decided to kill him, I might have sent him away where he'd never be known or found. I was not thinking clearly and I knew it; I needed time. That child, if he had been mine, was heir to Miraval and Barbentain both, he would have ruled Arbonne."

"But instead?" Bertran's voice was so low it could barely be heard. Blaise saw that he had laced his fingers tightly together.

"But instead Aelis was dead when I went back to her room. I was going up to tell her she would never see her child, that no one would ever know who he was, even if I chose to let him love. I wanted to… hurt her so much for what she had done. She cheated me, though. She was already dead when I returned. When I went back down again, after, I had them give me the child. I took him alone into the great hall and sat by the fire, holding him. I could see he was not strong. It wasn't very long before he died. They rarely live, born so soon. He was two months early."

"I know. That's why I wasn't here." Silence again. Blaise could hear the wind whistling down the valley and the cries of wounded and dying men. Overhead, very high, a flock of birds cut across the sun, heading south, late in the year. He could see that some of the priests and priestesses had crossed from the isle to tend to the injured, fires were being lit on the battlefield. He shivered again, in his heavy cloak.

"You might have told me this," Bertran said, finally.

"Why?" Urté" said. "To ease your mind? Why would I have wanted to do that? I was happy to have you wondering if he was alive—that meant you could never kill me, didn't it?"

That thin smile again. But after a moment his expression altered and he added, "You wouldn't have believed me in any case. You know that."

Slowly Bertran shook his head. "No. I wouldn't have. I was almost certain you had killed them both."

"I know. Almost certain, not quite. I enjoyed your thinking that. I hope it was in you like poison all these years."

"It was. Like poison. All these years."

"She was my wife," said Urté de Miraval. "What did you think I would do when I found out?"

Bertran was very still, his head lowered. When he spoke, it was in a voice scraped raw. "I loved her. I have never stopped loving her. You never did, my lord. For you this has been about nothing but pride all these years."

With a tremendous effort Urté managed to lift himself on one elbow. "That would have been enough," he said. "More than enough. But you are wrong again. You have always been wrong about that, you and everyone else." He paused to draw a difficult, gasping breath; blood was seeping from his wound. "It was Aelis who didn't love me, not the other way around. I could never write songs, you see. I am glad we have won. Rian shelter this land of Arbonne forever in her arms."

Slowly then, with a soldier's grace and considerable courage in the face of mortal pain, he lowered himself to the cold ground, and his eyes closed as he died.

Bertran remained on his knees beside the body for a long time. No one else moved or spoke. When Bertran finally rose, he turned to Thierry de Carenzu.

"May I leave what remains with you?" he asked, with toneless formality.

"Of course," said the other man.

They watched as the duke of Talair walked back to where his horse was being held by a coran. Bertran mounted up without assistance and rode slowly from the valley, west, towards the avenue of trees that led to the arch.

Valery made an awkward movement, as if minded to follow but then checked himself. Blaise, looking over at him, saw a huge, vivid grief stamped on the coran's normally calm features. He walked over to stand close by Valery, not touching him, but wanting to be near. Then, a moment later, he realized that Thierry was looking at him with unexpected compassion and he realized what was left to come. Blaise closed his eyes, and it was Valery who reached out and touched his shoulder briefly.

Blaise looked at Thierry de Carenzu. "Have I the right to ask that it be done cleanly?" he said quietly.

"It will be," said Ariane's husband. "For you, and for ourselves, because of what we are, what we refuse to become."

Blaise nodded his head. Thierry turned and Blaise followed him across the darkening field to where his father was still standing, ringed by men with swords.

"I am holding this man," said Rudel Correze, speaking clearly and with unwonted gravity as they approached, "for the judgment of Arbonne."

"Final judgment," said Thierry, "belongs to Rian and Corannos, not to us, but punishment is, indeed, our duty now. Not for acts of war. Ransom and release could be granted if it were only those. For what has been done to the priestesses, though, this man must surely die."

No one spoke. Only the cries of the wounded and the sound of the wind marred the stillness. There were fires all over the valley now, more for warmth than anything else; the light was still clear though the day was waning.

"Will you deny that the burning of women was by your command?" Thierry asked of the man in the ring.

"Hardly," said Galbert de Garsenc.

No more than that. The High Elder stood, blood on his smooth, handsome face and on his blue robes, surrounded by mortal foes at the end of his life, and it seemed to his younger son as if he had, even now, nothing but contempt for any man here.

"Out of respect for your son, we will grant you a death by arrows," Thierry said stolidly. Not far away, on his wheeled platform, Aurelian the singer had been unbound. Someone had covered his body with a cloak.

"I would like," said Galbert de Garsenc, "a few moments with my son before I die." Blaise felt his mouth go dry. There was a silence. "This is a last request," added the High Elder of Gorhaut.

Thierry turned to Blaise, so did Rudel, concern in the eyes of both, a desire to shelter him from this. Blaise shook his head. He cleared his throat. "I believe it is a fair request. One that we can honour." He looked carefully at Thierry. "If that is acceptable to you?"

Thierry nodded slowly. Rudel still looked as if he would protest, and Blaise heard Valery behind him murmur something fierce under his breath, but the duke of Carenzu, with a wave of his arm, motioned the circle of guards to draw back.

When they had done so Blaise walked forward. The ring of men parted to let him through.

"It seems," said his father calmly as he came up, "that I misjudged Urté de Miraval." He might have been discussing the wrong track a hunt had taken, or some mistaken crop rotation on the Garsenc lands.

"He was hardly likely to join you after women were burned."

Galbert shrugged. "Was that it, do you think? Did he change his mind, or was it planned?"

"Planned," said Blaise. "By him and the countess. No one else knew."

"Clever, then," said his father. He sighed. "Ah, well, at least I have lived long enough to know my son will rule in Gorhaut."

Blaise laughed bitterly. "With so much aid and nurture from you."

"Well, of course," said Galbert. "I have been working towards this for years."

Blaise stopped laughing. "That," he said harshly, "is a lie." Something hard and awkward seemed suddenly to have lodged itself in his chest. He swallowed with difficulty.

"Is it?" said Galbert placidly. "You are supposed to be the clever one. Think, Blaise."

He couldn't remember the last time his father had called him by name.

"What is there to think about?" he snapped. "You showed your devotion to your family with Rosala and now here with Ranald. You killed your son."

"I gave him life and I took it away," said Galbert, still mildly, "though I was sorry to have to do it. He was worthless as a man until the end, but he was about to undo my one chance to cleanse this land."

"Of course. That is what you have been working towards all these years."

"Among other things. I would hardly have been worth much myself if I had only one purpose in life. I wanted Arbonne scourged if it could be done, I wanted a son of mine on the throne of Gorhaut if it could be done. I never expected to have both, but I did see reason to hope for one or the other."

"You are lying," Blaise said again, hearing the note of desperation in his voice and fighting to control it. "Why are you doing this? We know what you wanted: you intended me to follow you into the service of the god."

"But naturally. You were the younger son, where else should I place you? Ranald was to become king." Galbert shook his head, as if Blaise were being unexpectedly obtuse. "Then you balked me, not for the first time or the last, and a little later it became clear that Ranald was… what he was."

"You made him that."

Again Galbert shrugged. "If he could not deal with me he could not have dealt with kingship. You seemed to have found a way to do both. After I managed to drive you away with the Treaty of Iersen Bridge."

Blaise felt himself losing colour. "You are now going to tell me—"

"That I had a number of reasons for that treaty. Yes, I am. I did. Think, Blaise. Money for this war and a dagger at Ademar's back among the dispossessed of the north. And I finally made you leave Gorhaut, to go where you could become a focus for those who might oppose Ademar. And me," he added as an afterthought.

"Incidentally," Galbert went on, still in that same flat, calm manner, "you are going to need a great deal of money to retake the northern marches, especially after our losses today. Fortunately Lucianna d'Andoria is a widow again. I was planning to have Borsiard killed here if no one in your army managed to do it. I saw her as a possible bride for Ranald if events fell out that way. You'll have to marry her now, which I know will make you almost as happy as it makes her father. With his daughter a queen he might even forego bringing her home to his own bed at intervals." Galbert smiled; Blaise felt slightly faint. "Watch him though, watch Massena Delonghi closely. Between the Correze and Delonghi banks, however, you should be able to deal with Valensa withholding the rest of the payments they owe by the terms of the treaty."

Blaise felt his head beginning to ache, as if he were absorbing blows.

"You are lying, aren't you? Tell me why? What does it gain you now, at this point, to try to make me believe you planned all of this?"

"I didn't plan it all, Blaise, don't be a fool. I am a mortal servant of Corannos, not a god. After you left home for Gotzland and Portezza I thought Fulk de Savaric and some of the other northern barons would send men after you with an offer of kingship. I didn't expect you to step forward yourself the way you did. I didn't know you had so much… rashness in you. I did consider that you might end up in Arbonne at some point, if only because you knew I would be coming here, but I didn't know how much… influence they would have on you. That, I will admit, has been a surprise."

"Ademar," said Blaise, still struggling. "You did everything for him. You even tried to give him Rosala."

His father's expression was contemptuous. "I did nothing for Ademar but offer him rope for his hanging. He was never worth more than that. He was an instrument that would let me take Arbonne for the god. That is all." He shrugged again. "We seem to have failed in that. It is my grief as I die. I really thought we could not lose. In which case I expected the Correze boy would take you away from here-back to Portezza, and in time I might yet achieve both halves of my dream. Ademar would never have been able to hold Arbonne—not after what I intended to do here." His beautiful voice, thought Blaise, was so seductively lucid. "As for Rosala, really Blaise—that was to goad the barons further against him—and you, if you needed a further spur, and it was only to be after she'd borne her Garsenc child. Tell me, the boy, Cadar, he is yours isn't he?"

Blaise felt his hands beginning to shake. "Will you soil everything you touch in your life, even at the end? Can nothing be clean?"

"My death, or so I have been promised," said Galbert drily. His mouth quirked. "Come, Blaise, if it isn't yours I will die wondering whose it is. I did some investigating after Ranald had been married some time without an heir. I discovered that in all the years he was King's Champion, with women clawing each other in their lust for his bed, he never fathered a single child that I could trace. You will remember that my brother failed to produce an heir either. There may be a flaw in our seed, though I seem to have escaped it. Did you?"

Blaise looked down at his shaking hands. He said, "Nothing ever mattered except the goals, did it? Nothing had meaning in itself. We were all tools, every one of us, Ademar, Rosala, Ranald and I, even when we were boys."

His father made a flicking gesture of dismissal. "What did you want, Blaise? Lullabies? A pat on the back? A doting father's grip on the shoulder when you did well?"

"Yes," said Blaise then, as evenly as he could. "Yes, that is what I suppose I wanted."

For the first time Galbert seemed to hesitate. "You have managed all right without them."

"Yes," said Blaise again, taking a breath and letting it out slowly. "I managed." He looked at his father. "Had we leisure to discuss it I might tell you something of my own sense of things, but I don't think I want to." He paused. He felt very calm now. "Is there more, father?"

A silence, then slowly Galbert shook his head. For another moment they looked at each other, then Blaise turned and went from the ring. The soldiers parted to make way for him. He saw that a company of archers in the crimson colours of Carenzu had come up to join the others now. Beyond them he saw his horse, with Hirnan holding the reins. He walked over and mounted up and began riding away. He didn't look back.

Behind him he heard Rudel's voice asking a question, and Thierry responding, very clearly, then he heard an order spoken and he heard the arrows sing.