Guy Kay - A Song for Arbonne

Of course, Blaise thought with loathing, fighting sickness. It was part of the mockery: the blindness, and the birds of Rian. And then, with deepening horror, Blaise realized that he knew this maimed, dark-haired man as well. He looked over again to the head on the highest of the bobbing pikes and then turned, speechless, to Bertran de Talair. He saw that the duke had lowered his head so as not to have to see.

The landscape and the men on the ramparts grew oddly unfocused, and Blaise became aware that he was near to weeping, he who had killed so many men in war, or beside the shore of this same lake, or in the close darkness of a Portezzan night, and had seen others slain in terrible ways, and had regarded all of it as no more than the coinage of his profession. But he had never burned a helpless old woman naming her a witch, or dragged a priestess screaming from her bed, and he had never maimed or broken men in the way that these had been. This was warfare of a different kind.

He was remembering, almost against his will, Midsummer Night in Tavernel. Remy had been the fair-haired one, with more spirit and art than mature wisdom in him perhaps, and Aurelian was the darker, quieter man. They were musicians, not soldiers, both of them, and both were young. It was these two who had carried Beatritz's tidings to Barbentain from the island; they must have gone north together, Blaise realized, after delivering the High Priestess's message. He didn't know why; they might never know why.

"Look there," he heard someone say. Rudel, his voice strained in the sound of the wind.

Blaise passed a hand across his eyes and looked down again. Following where Rudel was pointing, he saw, among the army of Arbonne spread out below the walls, a dozen archers, crimson-clad, moving neatly forward from the ranks. He did not know who had given this order; perhaps no one had. Perhaps this was simply the instinctive response of some of the best-trained men in the country, those sworn to guard, and to uphold the honour of the queen of the Court of Love—to whom all the troubadours of Arbonne had sworn their life's service and devotion.

Blaise saw the Carenzu archers set themselves in a line, draw back bowstrings together and then let their arrows fly, high into the face of the wind. Among the ranks of Gorhaut a sudden volley of shouts brought the singing to a ragged halt; men flung up shields and hastily lowered their helms.

They need not have done so. The arrows were not an attack. They had been sent out like arching prayers, in grief and passion and rage, in an anguished attempt to put the ruined man on the platform out of pain. Most fell short. Three did not, and one of those arrows pierced him through the heart. The dark-haired man's head was flung sharply back so the holes of his eyes stared blankly up at the bright, lost sun. They saw his mouth open then but no sound came forth. No sound at all as Aurelian died, no last note like a swan, though all his days he had been celebrated for the pure, transcendent beauty of his voice.

"Oh, Lady," whispered Bertran de Talair. "Oh, goddess, heal and shelter them now within the infinite mercy of your arms." Blaise realized that his own hands were shaking. He gripped them together on the stone in front of him.

"You will excuse me," Thierry de Carenzu said, visibly working to maintain his composure. "I think I must go down and tell Ariane. She ought not to learn this from anyone else."

Blaise said nothing. He could think of nothing to say. There was someone else, he thought suddenly, who ought properly to hear of these two deaths from someone who cared for her, but he didn't know where Lisseut was, and he didn't think it was his place, given who had done this thing. He watched his father remove his war helm in the valley below and then his tall, handsome, anointed king did the same. Blaise's eyes were dry and his hands grew steady then as he looked down at the two of them.

In this windy green valley by Lake Dierne, Ademar of Gorhaut is a happy man. The presence of the Arbonnais army here before them is a surprise of sorts, but not an unpleasant one. The High Elder has been telling him from the beginning that this lake will see the battle that ends Arbonne. They had expected things to follow a slightly different sequence, anticipating that it would be their sacking and burning of the Isle of Rian that would bring the goddess-afflicted soldiers of this land out from their walls to battle.

They did not anticipate an army waiting for them, but Ademar turns away from the now-dead singer on the platform—one of the two fools they caught spying on their line of march—and sees his High Elder smiling as well.

"It is well," Galbert says, the deep voice rich with satisfaction. "They are ignorant as well as cowardly. Had they known about our shortage of food they would not be here. As it is, this will be over tomorrow, my liege, and the granaries of Arbonne will lie open to us with everything else. See their numbers? See our own? Look up at the god's sun over us."

"It is well," Ademar says briefly. At times he tires of Galbert's intoned pieties, and even his jaded appetites are nearly sated by now of the High Elder's passion for fire and maiming. Ademar has come to conquer a rich land and to scotch the whiff of rebellion shaped by the younger Garsenc son and Fulk de Savaric. Galbert is here for something else. The god will have his due and more, the king has promised as much. He only hopes it does not last too long, and leaves him some fields to sow and harvest and a country to rule when the last of the burning is done. The numbers are indeed very good though, Galbert speaks truth there, and there are surprises in reserve.

"If we are to fight tomorrow," says Borsiard d'Andoria, moving his splendid horse nearer, "then may I ask that the High Elder's disinherited son, the pretender, be left for me to deal with? I have reasons of my own, you understand."

Ademar doesn't like this vain, choleric man, but he has been made to accept the importance that a Portezzan company in their ranks will have for the days after the war. At times it seems to him that he accepts rather too much from the High Elder, but the king of Gorhaut is willing to be tolerant yet. A great deal had been promised him and those promises are about to bear fruit.

Another horse approaches and he hears its rider laugh sardonically. "My brother," says Duke Ranald de Garsenc to the elegantly garbed Portezzan, as the three men turn to look at him, "could slice you into pieces while attending to other business at the same time. Be not so hasty, my lord, to single him out unless you want your dear wife widowed again and free for another marriage." The words are a little slurred. Ranald does not look well. It is a fair assumption that he has already been drinking during the morning's ride. His father scowls, but Ademar is genuinely amused, not at all unhappy to observe the de Garsenc at odds again, or the Portezzan's flushed discomfiture.

"Well, if we are speaking of dear wives—" Borsiard d'Andoria begins waspishly.

"We are not speaking of them," Ademar says quickly, asserting his control. He does not want this discussed, not now, and not ever in public. He wonders if Rosala de Garsenc is in Talair Castle now or still in Barbentain. Shrewdly he guesses she has come with the army, that the countess of Arbonne, too, is within those walls by the lake. If so, it will all truly be over tomorrow, Galbert will have been right. He remembers, amused again, that it was Ranald who suggested once that he marry Signe be Barbentain in order to gain control of Arbonne. That is not going to be necessary, it seems.

"There are formalities," his High Elder is now saying, as he turns his back on his elder son. "Shall I send the herald to speak your demands, my liege?" This, too, diverts the king, the so-careful observance of protocols and rituals despite what they have been doing to unarmed men and women and to children all the way south. That, Ademar thinks sagely, is what happens when one marries a religious crusade with a war of conquest.