Nancy Berberick - The Lioness

Kerian nodded to Jeratt, who went off down the hill to gather a few of those still standing. They went out into the forest, cat-footed. A young woman ran up the hill—where did she get the strength?—to whisper in Kerian’s ear.

“Yes, and quickly. Keep an eye out for friends.”

Down she went, bounding, and in moments, one by one, guards took stands around the hill, setting a perimeter. Stanach put his arms on his drawn-up knees, his head on his forearms. He did not take four breaths before Kerian heard him gently snoring. She sat alone beside the sleeping emissary from Thorbardin, a dwarf far from home. When he wavered, she helped him lie down. He hardly woke, never missed a breath. Neither did he stir when Jeratt came back to say he’d found nothing and no one in the forest.

“I don’t know what the dwarf heard, but we didn’t see sign of anything. Just his imagination?”

Kerian glanced at Stanach, sleeping, then back. “Doesn’t usually have a very active imagination, does he?”

Jeratt agreed that he didn’t “What dwarf does? There’s nothing there, Kerian. Just the night, the forest and our doom, eh?”

Just those things. Jeratt sat down. He’d found a good stream and offered her his leather water bottle, fat and dripping. “That’s supper, I’m afraid, and I’m thinking breakfast won’t be much better.”

After a time, he went away to watch at the edge of the camp, and Kerian saw him walking among the warriors, bending low to speak to one, slapping the shoulder of another. In the morning they would break their fast on a bitter bread. In the morning, Thagol would come through the forest with steel.

She sat a long time thinking, gazing into the forest. After a time, she saw a fire spring up, then another. The blood in her veins was cold, and her heart weighed like stone as one after another fires of Thagol’s encampments glowed, out in the distance, out between the trees. One and one and one … they made a circle, wide and strong.

“They ring us in,” she said to the night.

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again her heart stood suddenly still. Upon the forest night, the trees, the darkness, the little bits of light from campfires, something moved between her camp and that of the Knights. Hair rose up prickling on her arms, the back of her neck. Kerian’s breath caught, and she let it go silently. Whatever it was drifted, then stopped, then drifted again. It moved like smoke, like shadow, and as Kerian watched, trying to make out shape and substance, the thing vanished.

Beside her, Stanach stirred. He groaned, cursed, and shoved himself up to sitting. He saw the water and drank deeply. He offered her some, and she drank more.

Kerian pointed to the lights, the real gleams of real fires. Stanach sighed.

“I tell you, Mistress Lioness, I don’t like being away from Thorbardin. It’s never good. I’m meant to be there, I’m supposed to be there. All this …” He swept his arm wide, taking in the sleeping elves, the distant Knights and draconians. “All this, damn, I don’t even know why I’m here anymore—where I am or what I’m fighting for.”

“You’re north of Reanlea Gorge, not far from Lighting—”

“—Thunder.”

“Lightning and Thunder. You aren’t even all that far from Thorbardin. Closer than you’d be if you were sleeping in a bed of goose down in the best chamber King Gilthas could offer.”

A small breeze wandered around the top of the hill, smelling like earth and stone, like the water in the rill below. “Ah, your king. And you, his own, dear outlaw.”

She looked at him sideways. He did not smile, but he slid her a look of knowing.

“His own, dear outlaw, that’s you. What are you going to do in the morning, Mistress Lioness?”

“Fight.”

He shook his head. “You won’t make it through. The Skull Knight is set up to crush you.”

“Us,” she murmured, her eyes on the fires.

He grunted. “You’ll die.”

“We probably will.”

The first howling of wolves wound through the night. One to another, they called out, Brother! Where are you? Brother! There is food! Brother!

Kerian winced, thinking of the corpses to be stripped, the bodies of friends who could not be decently buried.

Softly Stanach said, “How will we die, Mistress Lioness?”

Kerian drew a breath, a long one, and on it she felt again the quiver of tears she’d shed for a boy who had flung himself between Thagol’s sword and her breast.

“We will die well. If anyone knows about it, if anyone of us gets out of here to tell, they will be singing the song of us in every tavern in Qualinesti and all the best bars in Thorbardin.”

“Our kings would be proud.”

Now tears did prick behind her eyes. “Yes, they would be proud.”

They stood a moment longer, silent and watching the wood. Once, Stanach peered a little closer into the darkness. Kerian followed his line of sight and thought she saw a darker darkness moving. She glanced at the dwarf, he at her. They looked again and saw only fires winking, out there in the darkness, like bloodshot stars. Wolves howled, and Stanach said they’d better get some more sleep.

“Goodnight, missy,” he said, his voice low and fond.

Kerian, however, did not sleep. She sat long awake, watching the fires of her foe, watching over her warriors.

Now and then she saw flitting shadows in the woods, swift out of the corner of her eye and gone. No more than that and certainly nothing of the odd shape she’d seen earlier.

The risen sun set the morning haze afire, gilding the tops of the trees, staining the stones with ghostly blood-paint. In the sky, crows hung. Ravens burdened the trees, and Kerian stood upon the hill, high on the top of the lichened boulder. Below, her warriors made ready. They had slept cold, not lighting fires. Now they sat improving their weapons, honing bright edges, attending to bow strings, to fletching.

“Do we wait?” Jeratt asked, his eye on the distance, his mind already in the field.

Kerian didn’t think there was anything else to do. “Get them all to high ground,” she said, with one gesture sweeping the hollow below. “If Thagol’s going to get us, he’s going to work for it.”

Jeratt whistled. Every head turned, faces lifted. He gestured, and Kerian counted them, coming. There weren’t more than a hundred of them, with weakened weapons. Some had stolen swords, lifted from corpses. Out in the forest, there had to be half as many draconians and twice as many Knights. She gathered her warriors around her.

“Find cover wherever you can, make them find you. We don’t rush; we don’t attack. We hold this hill until we’ve killed all we can.”

Until they have killed us.

Beside her, Stanach made his axe sing to a whetstone. Little sparks flew up from the blade. It amazed her he still had it. The weapon was made to fly, to kill at a distance. It was easily the first weapon lost in any battle.

“Are you fond of it?” she asked, her eyes on the forest, watching for her foe.

“The axe. Pretty much. I made it.”

She turned, surprised. “You?”

From lowering brows, he looked at her. He held up his hand, the one with the broken fingers. He turned the hand over, as though to study it. “Surprising, isn’t it? Fight pretty good for a one-handed man. Imagine what I could do with two.”

The color mounted to her cheeks as she watched him study his hand. He didn’t move those fingers, he couldn’t, but sight of them reminded her of the sign above his tavern door, a broken hammer on an anvil’s breast Stanach’s Curse.

“Look,” said the dwarf, with his axe pointing down to the forest. “Time has come, Mistress Lioness.”

Time had come. The Knights came through the forest on foot, their steeds abandoned. They did not come clanking in armor. They came lightly, in mail and some wearing breastplates. They came behind a vanguard of draconians, the lizard-men their shield and decisive weapon all at once. The wind came from behind, carrying the reptile stench of them, the reek of their foul breath.