Guy Kay - A Song for Arbonne

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.