Elizabeth Haydon - Destiny - Child of the Sky

“Unhand me,” he said sternly. “I can make it on my own.”

Once inside the shelter of the walls Stephen waded through the crowd, shouting.

“Out of the way! Back, get back from the wall!”

He shut out the ferocious noise all around him—the moaning of the injured, the cries of joy from family members reunited, the frantic calls of parents searching for lost children, the shouted orders from the various regimental captains, the scream of wood and metal as the enormous gates were closed—and quickly scaled the rampart, pulling himself atop the wall next to a guard tower that had been shattered by a catapult blast.

Outside the wall what remained of the Sorbold column, now unfettered by Llauron’s intervention of wolves and weather, was marching, walking, limping, crawling resolutely forward, one by one, into the rain of arrows from the archers atop the wall. Stephen shuddered at the utter lifelessness of their eyes, the relentlessness of their intentions. Only a few dozen remained of the attacking force; the cavalry had been decimated by the archers, and a hundred riderless horses were milling about aimlessly on the bloody field.

The Master of the Wall made his way to Stephen’s side, and stood silently, staring, as the duke did, out onto the field beyond the wall.

After a moment Stephen found his voice; his throat was dry and tight, so it sounded young and frightened to his ears. He coughed, and spoke again.

“Command half your men to rescue what stragglers they can—lower down pikes, anything, just get the few that remain inside the wall.”

“Why aren’t they retreating?” the Master of the Wall wondered aloud. “They are marching right into the flights of arrows.”

Stephen shuddered, fighting back grisly memories. “They will continue to do so, I fear, until the last man is dead. Tell your archers to train their arrows on the catapults, and pick off as many as you can there. I will have the commander of the third regiment send a force out to capture them. In the meantime, instruct the archers to aim to injure, not to kill. We need to capture some of the Sorbolds alive and try to make some sense of this nightmare.” The Master of the Wall nodded, and disappeared from Stephen’s peripheral vision as he continued to stare out over the atrocity that only a moment ago had been the solstice festival. The bright colored banners still flapped, tattered, in the stiff, smoky breeze, the glistening maypole ribbons continued to spin merrily in the wind, black with soot.

He already knew what the Sorbolds would say.

Why?

I don’t know, m’lord. I don’t remember.

The library at Haguefort was enormous, with high ceilings that reflected the slightest sound. Footsteps echoed on the marble floor, swallowed intermittently by the silk rugs. A slight cough or the clearing of the throat could be heard in all corners of the vast room.

Despite those sensitive acoustics, not a sound was audible now save for the crackling of the fire and the ticking of the clock.

Cedric Canderre sat heavily on one of the leather sofas near the fireplace, staring blankly into the flames, his face decades older than it had been that morning. Beside him sat Quentin Baldasarre, Duke of Bethe Corbair, Dunstin’s brother. His silence was very different; his eyes were gleaming with a light that barely contained its wrath, and even his silent breathing was tinged with fury. Lanacan Orlando, the benison of his province, who sat in the wing chair next to him awkwardly patting his hand in an attempt to comfort him, was growing more nervous by the moment. When Quentin finally waved him away angrily, Orlando seemed almost relieved.

Ihrman Karsrick, the Duke of Yarim, poured himself another full glass of brandy, noting that Stephen’s decanter was in sorry need of refilling. He alone among the dukes of Roland had not suffered the loss of a relative or close friend, though the head of the winning sledge team, a popular guild member in his province and his personal blacksmith, had died in the attack.

The holy men had been inept at dispensing comfort, in Karsrick’s opinion; Colin Abernathy had been unable to stop weeping for more than a few moments. Lanacan Orlando, generally considered a great healer and source of consolation, was clearly irritating his duke far more than he was helping him. Philabet Griswold, the pompous Blesser of Avonderre-Navarne, had begun pontificating about Sorbold and the need for an immediate retaliation earlier but was glared into silence by Stephen Navarne, a member of his own See. Stephen was currently elsewhere looking in on his children and the makeshift hospital wards that had been set up within his holdings to tend to the wounded. Nielash Mousa, the Blesser of Sorbold, was sitting isolated in a corner, his dark skin pale and clammy. Only Ian Steward seemed calm.

The door of the library opened and Tristan Steward entered, closing it quietly behind him. He had excused himself to look in on Madeleine and the wounded from his province, and had been meeting in the courtyard below with the captains of his regiments. His face was a mask of .calm as he entered the room, but Karsrick could tell from the look in his eye that he was planning something, biding his time to reveal it.

Martin Ivenstrand, the Duke of Avonderre, stood up as Tristan passed.

“The casualties, Tristan—how bad?”

“Over four hundred dead, twice that many more injured,” Tristan said, coming to a stop before the wooden stand that contained Stephen’s prized atlas from Serendair. The ancient manuscript was covered with a glass dome in order to protect the fragile pages of the charts that depicted the long-dead island from the ravages of time. Ironic , Tristan thought absently. A carefully preserved map of a world that died a thousand years ago. Directions to nowhere .

“Sweet All-God,” murmured Nielash Mousa, the Blesser of Sorbold.

“Is that a benediction, or a plea for forgiveness?” snapped Philabet Griswold, the Blesser of Avonderre-Navarne.

Karsrick’s eyes, along with all the others in the room, riveted onto the two holy men, bitter enemies and hostile contenders behind the scenes for the sole right to wear the Patriarch’s Ring of Wisdom, white robes, and star-shaped talisman. With word coming out of Sepulvarta that the Patriarch was in his last days, the feud between the two men had heated to boiling. Throughout the festival they had gibed and sniped at each other, preening and positioning themselves with various nobles, speaking in furtive discussions, meeting secretly.

All the posturing was certainly a waste of time as far as Karsrick understood. The Patriarch could name his own successor, and pass his ring on to the benison of his choice, though the declaration did not seem to be forthcoming. If he did not do so, the great scales of Jierna Tal, the Place of Weight, would decide, with the ancient Ring of Wisdom balancing on one of the plates and the man it was judging on the other. Either way, the efforts of the two holy men to consolidate power seemed futile.

At the festival Griswold had appeared to have the upper hand. He was by far the most powerful benison in Roland, a fact that was magnified because the carnival taking place was within his See. Insiders at the Patriarch’s manse, however, whispered rumors that Mousa, the only non-Cymrian benison, and the Blesser of an entire country, was the Patriarch’s favored choice. In addition, if the decision of ascendancy were to go to the scales, it would certainly not weigh against Mousa that Jierna Tal was in Sorbold.

Whatever favor Mousa might have held before the festival, and whatever pleasure he might have drawn from those rumors, was gone now. While no one had broken the silence in the library in deference to the grief of Cedric Canderre and Quentin Baldasarre, it was clear by the almost-visible frost in the air where the clergy and nobility of Roland placed the blame for the attack. The Blesser of Sorbold. a normally unflappable man with dusky skin and a bland expression, had gone gray in the face. That face was puckered in worried lines and dotted with anxious perspiration.