The War, page 16
The general’s face lighted. “It is possible,” he said slowly. “Do what you can.”
~
Mordred waited in a hungering strain and anticipation for the eraris to return. Terrified that the attack would begin afresh before he could reach the leader with his desperate gambit, he paced feverishly over the barracks, peering constantly out the window and not caring that all eyes were directed at him for it. He would have liked to stay outside, but he dared not—not with the Mograre still loose. And besides, he had glimpsed a figure that he was almost sure was Fred’s on his return from Mithissa, and now he knew that one at least from Ceristen was in the city. How many more?
He forced his pacing to a halt and stood by the window, his forehead pressed into the frame as he clenched his sweating hands and struggled to calm himself. Worrying would not help, worrying would not bring the attack one second sooner or later—and then he saw it. A black flutter of motion passed the window, vanishing into the shadows of the next building and then reappearing in the open to settle on the ground.
An instant later Mordred had flung the door shut behind himself and knelt in the dusty road beside the crow. “Well?”
“Cern Dersturi wishes to know if you can leave the city, Richardson. He desires to see you as soon as may be. You are to give your report in person.”
Mordred’s heartbeat tripped sharply. “Tell him I shall come at once,” he said and rose. He went with a slow and irresolute step into the barracks.
He told the general that he was going first. Then he crossed the slender white bridge that forty Runnicorans had trod the night before and made a swift descent. There were no fifteen miles to traverse this time; just a brief walk around the base of the mountain and the difficulty of discovering the leader’s whereabouts in the busy camp. He would have liked more time; time to think, time to prepare. But at least he had less in which to wonder and fret.
The leader greeted him curtly but made no mention of the failed infiltration. He demanded to know how many of the trolls were in Mianu and still alive. Mordred replied honestly that he did not know.
The leader turned back to the papers he had been studying. He seemed in an ill mood, and Mordred was almost certain he was deliberately making him wait.
He knew it would be unwise to cross him or push him to speak, but he could not bear the frightening silence, and at last he said, softly, carefully, “I am sorry that the attempt on the gate did not succeed.”
“Oh?” said Cern Dersturi in an unreadable voice, looking up. “Well, you should know that is the reason you are here. Much as I hoped to make use of the eraris, I think that our communication will fare better without the garbling of a third party in the middle.”
He laid the blame on the crow. Relief seeped cool and welcome into Mordred’s hot, pounding blood.
“What further reports have you? Any fresh troops?”
“A detachment of four hundred men arrived in Mianu this forenoon, compensating for the loss sustained in the attack last night,” answered Mordred, and unconsciously stiffened as he waited for the reply. The bait had been tossed.
“Four hundred!” The leader ground his teeth, and spun away so that his back was to Mordred.
“So be it, then,” he muttered, wheeling again, his face dispassionate. “I will be drawing off from Mianu; it has cost me far too much already, and I cannot continue to waste men and time on it while it feeds on a steady stream of incoming soldiers. ’Tis time to regroup and reconnoiter. If I plan quickly enough, perhaps I can startle them while they are recovering and testing for trickery.”
He was saying—he was saying—Mordred could barely make sense out of the words for his disbelief. A great joyous release fell on him.
“Return to the city,” the leader continued. “I shall still need your services, though we will see if you can be moved shortly to a more profitable location.”
“Aye—aye, Paraki.”
“Go.” The leader dismissed him with a wave.
As Mordred turned towards the opening, someone else entered, the pale-faced man with silver-streaked hair who had looked at him so intently the day he had become Sinethar. Their gazes met, and the other man’s locked on Mordred’s, his dark, malignant eyes probing with a snakelike menace. Then Mordred broke away and went out into the night.
He wanted to go, wanted to bring the tidings to the general now, but night had fallen and he did not yet wish to attempt the mountain pass in the dark. He found a place and slept. In the morning with the first pale gold-haze of sun-rods he rose, and left the camp.
~
The night was past, and with it the time for grieving. Therelane had not shed tears; the words had hit him and numbed something inside of him that would not wake up no matter how hard he hit it. Braegon had wept; Marcus had cried as unashamedly as a boy half his age; but Therelane could not. And while the rest had one another, he felt apart again, severed, lonely. He wanted Mordred; and with all the selfishness of his heart he hated whatever power had taken Mordred away from them.
He walked recklessly through the streets, forgetting the danger and ignoring it when he did remember. He simply wanted something to happen, something that would liven the terrifying numbness inside him, something that would tell him Kenneth was alive and would see Marianne and Jerithan again.
The sun rose on him, and all the streets and buildings around caught the pure, untainted fire and were gilded almost tangibly by its light. Detached still, with that sickening, tight, dead feeling inside him, he wished the sun would not rise.
But nonetheless, watching it rise, he knew a measure of peace and it was as though warmth came back to the very edges of his heart.
I do not want to go on, he thought rebelliously.
But you will go on. You will go on, and you will still be glad of the beauty and the goodness in the world.
There is not enough goodness.
There is enough.
He let out a small, tired sigh, and hearing it he did not know which side of himself had been defeated. But the peace was still there, uncertain, yet tenacious.
Again he sighed, feeling very much more tired, and realized it was time he was heading back. He should not have gone out, at all, really.
He had entered a dim, small alleyway when he heard the sound—a low, stirring, rustling noise accompanied by grunts and clanking. As he lifted his head in alarm, a flicker of movement glanced by the corner of his eye.
He whirled about, and saw the last person he had expected.
CHAPTER 15
MORDRED LEANED OVER THE RAILING of the narrow bridge and drank in the vista of the yawning space below, the crevice between city and mountain, the mountain itself, sun-touched in the early morning, shadows knife-like and light keen. Unwillingly he turned and continued on, but his steps quickened as he remembered the words pressed within him for the general’s ears, longing to spring off his tongue. He is drawing off from Mianu . . .
He forgot himself, forgot Sinethar, Richardson, and the evil still lurking in Mianu. His only thought was the message he bore. As he worked his way deeper into the city and left the shining heights of the city for the lower shadowed alleys, he ran freely, his head and shoulders thrown back, even humming softly to himself.
Something checked him as he turned into a quiet lane, sudden and chill, a prickle that shot over him and centered at the nape of his neck. He glanced around and his eyes fixed directly on Therelane Grey.
All fear of imminent danger vanished from Mordred’s mind—there was only one imminent danger, and that was the one staring at him. He knew it was too late to turn, to run. Therelane’s mouth was opening, forming the shocked cry that would come a moment later.
Only it never came.
A rending growl rolled through the air, and Mordred, gripped with the earlier dread again, saw a large, dark thing charge out from the buildings straight between him and Therelane. He saw Therelane’s face, drained of color, saw the Mogra hefting a huge mace in its misshapen hand as it took a lumbering step towards Therelane. Therelane reached for his sword, tripped, fell—
Mordred cried out and lunged forward as the troll swung its mace.
It whirled on him at once, with terrifying agility, and he hacked at it again and again, rage and desperation driving every strike, fighting harder and better than he had ever used a sword. Again and again he felt the wind of the mace whistle past him, but he was never in its path—he was always dodging, diving, lashing his blade into it every chance he saw.
He overreached a stroke and tripped, like Therelane had, and sprawled backwards on the stones. But he did not die. Shouts came, that he heard as from a great distance, and suddenly a spear protruded from the troll’s side, and Mordred as he picked himself up saw that four or five other people had joined the fight.
After that it was a blur. Slashing, thrusting, mace flailing inches away, falling, getting up, cries, roars—and then someone yelled, “Get back!”
Mordred lurched to the side as the troll with a rumbling groan swayed and pitched earthwards, unmoving. Dead.
But Therelane—
He sprang forward, leaping over the twisted limbs of the monster, to the crumpled figure with soft dark hair tangled across his forehead. Therelane, he struggled to say, but the name would not come. Then he saw the chest lifting, faintly, and he sank to his knees in relief.
Where had it hit him? Not his head, not his neck, not his chest—had it cleared him altogether? Maybe he was only stunned in the fall, Mordred thought.
Then he saw it. His stomach surged up into his mouth, and as he swallowed back the sickness he felt weak and dizzy, and the world for a moment went white.
The mace’s brunt had fallen entirely on Therelane’s left hand. A hand that was dark and mangled beyond anything that looked like a hand, or ever would again.
~
“It’s Sinethar!” said one of the soldiers in surprise. For it was Sinethar, kneeling there beside the unconscious young man.
Sinethar got up, his knuckles white around the hilt of his sword and his face whiter. “Get him—somewhere—to a hospice,” he said, tersely, half-coherently, and set off into the streets at a hard run.
“Where has he been, anyway?” demanded another man. “Where does he go?”
“We’re not supposed to ask,” said the first. “Come, he was right; this man needs a surgeon.”
They took Therelane gently up between them and bore him to Mianu’s hospice. The girl in the ward that they entered took one look and snatched him from them, carrying him with a strength extraordinary for her slight frame.
“My lady, let us—if we can help?”
She thanked them curtly, dry-eyed, and told them to leave.
~
Mordred ran fiercely through the streets of Mianu. He ran until all he could think of was the next step, and the next, and the next, and so there was no time to think about Therelane Grey.
The general’s glad greeting gave place to anxiety as Mordred entered the room in Mithissa. “Mari, you are weary and your clothes are bloodstained,” he exclaimed. “Are you wounded?”
Mordred shook his head, words refusing to come.
“What was it, a skirmish in the streets?” The concern deepened in his face. “Or is it possible you have been discovered?”
“No—no,” he stammered, and after that the words came, though in short bursts and gasps. “ I—no, I have not been discovered. Let me—tell you the news from the camp . . . before I explain this.”
“If you must, then. But sit down. Your legs are shaking under you.” When Mordred did not move, the general drew out his own chair and guided him forward, and Mordred dropped into it without protest.
“The leader is drawing off from Mianu,” he said flatly. The joyful news that he had thought to bring was stale and worthless on his tongue.
But the general started and leaned forward, wonder breaking over his face. “You are certain?”
“Yes. He believes the cost is too high . . . ” But while Mordred mechanically narrated the details of his exchange with the leader, his mind was seeing again Therelane’s face, the fear in his eyes, his fall as he tried to defend himself, and finally the dreadful hand. The hand that was not a hand.
“Now tell me, Mordred.” The general’s voice, clear and urgent, broke in upon his inner turmoil. “What is this, that you would not speak of it to me before?”
“Nothing.” Mordred was ashamed of the tremor in his voice. “You would not remember Therelane Grey—one of us from Ceristen.”
The general smiled, shaking his head. “I remember you all. Therelane is the quiet dreamer of the family that is cursed.”
The sickness was coming back, the quivering in his limbs. “He—was—injured.”
The general reached out as if to steady him. “Say on.”
Mordred’s stomach contracted again. He wondered if he would be able to get the words out. He shut his eyes for a moment and thought about nothing, and slowly let them open again. “One of the Mograre came upon him. He tripped and fell and I ran forward to attack it. Maybe I deflected its blow with mine; at any rate I distracted it after its first strike, and then others came and we killed it. But—Therelane’s—hand—is crushed.”
He said no more. He did not think he could.
The general rose. “I will see him,” he murmured, reaching for his cloak. “You may rest here until you need to leave.”
“I should go now.” He stood, dizzy with tiredness. “Some of the men saw me; they will be wondering why I am not back at the barracks.”
“Do not worry about the men at the barracks. I will arrange things.” The general’s hand was on his shoulder, guiding him back into the chair.
“No,” Mordred insisted, rising and fighting the tendency to reel forward. “You have enough to manage without making excuses for me, my general—I will go.”
He went out the door, pace as steady and back as straight as he could manage, until he knew that the general could no longer see him. He was walking almost blind by the time he reached the barracks.
~
“General?”
“Lady Grey.” The general was struck with wonder at how near kin to the young Therelane she looked, and yet how unlike. It seemed as though she had acquired all the shrewdness and firmness in her girl’s body where Therelane had the soft uncertainty. There were small, hard lines of fatigue around her young mouth; despite her petite figure, she appeared neither lissome nor frail.
Yet she was weary. It was in the set of her shoulders, and in the circles beneath her dark-browed, cynical eyes. Her hair hung loose and heavy over her shoulders, damp at the temples with sweat.
“Aye?” she said curtly. He realized that she had no time to spare for niceties.
“Tell me, where is Therelane, your brother? He was brought in not long since, is it not so?”
The taut lines deepened around the mouth. “Yes,” she returned, still shortly; “it is so. What is it to you?”
“If the physicians will permit,” said the general, “I would see him.”
She shrugged and beckoned him to follow as she sped down the hall and wheeled into a doorway on the left. Past groaning men, men tossing with fever—“Here,” she said, and jerking a finger at one cot near the far end of the ward, she halted. “He’s sleeping, you know,” she added with her customary abruptness.
“Sleeping?”
“Unconscious, if you like.”
Therelane lay with a coverlet drawn all the way to his chin, his face still and of a ghastly paleness. I have seen men die after looking like that, thought the general.
“He may come out of it,” said Irene, as if she had read his mind. “It is too early to tell. He was half awake when they brought him in, but after—” She snapped off the words with another shrug.
“I have heard only of the one injury—I do not know if there were any others—”
Irene was shaking her head. “It left him unmarked, save that one blow.”
“And the hand?”
Irene Grey said nothing. She lifted aside the thin blanket for a moment, and the general saw the blood-stained, shredded sleeve, and what protruded beneath.
“It will go hard on him, if he wakes,” he said quietly.
Still Irene said nothing. No tears were in her eyes, yet the general saw the grief behind them.
“It will go hard on all of them who love him,” he continued. “There was no other way?”
“It would have killed him to keep it,” she said simply. “The work grows more, and not less. I must away.” She spun on her heel and strode back down the ward.
~
Sinethar was always withdrawn, taciturn; the sergeant, bearing in mind the mysterious orders from the general, made no comment on his broody nature or his frequent absences. But when Sinethar returned that afternoon swaying with exhaustion, scarcely able to speak, clothing bloodied, he was almost tempted to break the rule.
As a matter of fact he found out the truth soon enough, though it was not from Sinethar but several other men, who explained that Sinethar had been in a brief skirmish with a mountain troll in the city that morning. So that was an end of that matter, and no one seemed to be the worse.
Sinethar himself slept for several hours, and it seemed to the sergeant that after he woke he was in a stranger mood than he had ever been. Refusing to talk, avoiding all people, an odd pain in his face—indeed, it occurred to Sergeant Corass that he was grieving.
~
Mordred hated Sinethar. With a passionate, anguished hatred he hated him. It was Sinethar who barred him from open suffering. It was Sinethar who would not let him go to the others from Ceristen, because of Sinethar that he could not even see Therelane and comfort him. Every word that Sinethar must speak came as gall out of his mouth, and he thought he would choke on it.
The word came from the general that evening, in the form of a small missive delivered by a soldier: Therelane Grey still lives. They were obliged to amputate his hand.
Mordred had known it already. He had known that sickening, mutilated thing would never be a hand again. It made the tidings a very little easier to bear. He did not shudder or cry out but turned his face against the wall, the tears burning behind his eyes.
