Кэролайн Черри - Fortress in the Eye of Time

“The banner of the King of Elwynor!” Cefwyn exclaimed suddenly, and indeed there was the glimmer of a shadowy white Star on a black field waving against the center of the lines. “ That banner does not belong to them!” Cefwyn cried. “There is Aséyneddin! Let us go and take it from him!”

— Aséyneddin , the Wind said, would welcome his true King, the Sihhë king he and his fathers before him have awaited. This man would fall on his knees at your feet. I can assure that will happen. Be that King. You can stop this. No one need die .

Then do so! he thought of saying; but he recalled the lord Regentʼs warning never to begin to listen, and never to begin to answer .

— I do not want to fight you , the Wind said, I do not, my mistaught lord of the Sihhë. So I shall not. Come to me when youʼre done with him. — Iʼll wait .

Aséyneddinʼs banner too blazed with a pale, unnatural glimmering in the dark, Illusion of light, no more, no less than he could do: that was Hasufinʼs working in the world.

But at the same moment a new presence impinged on his awareness, distant, desperate, and mortal, against which Hasufin strove — a distraction to him it was possible to feel as he felt the outlines of Hasufinʼs power unfurl within the woods, a trap for any Man who rode too far.

Pelumer, he thought. It was Pelumer, fighting for escape, in the edge of Marna.

An enemy shield was coming toward him, a Griffin blazing white. He centered his lance. A howl went up from the oncoming ranks of the Elwynim, metal lit by the illusory glamor he had sent over them. Dysʼ hindquarters bunched and drove with all his force. Uwen was on his left. Cefwyn was on his right as a lance raked off his shield and line met line with a thunder-crack and a shock that went up his arm.

His lance bent and exploded in splinters, a lance grated off his shield, and the riderless horse passed him as he cast the stump aside. He shielded off a blow from the following rank and ripped his sword from its leather bindings.

Guelen blades, Guelen maces hammered about him as lighter horses and lighter-armed riders and foot now struck behind the heavy cavalry, Elwynim riders that had not carried through attempted retreat and became involved in a dark mass of their own Elwynim infantry bristling with weapons and trying to defend against the Guelen horse.

He sent Dys into the midst of footsoldiers, drew the light of illusion about him and all the riders near him, harmless show — but it terrified men before him, and ranks broke.

Riders followed him…he was aware of it as he knew the whereabouts of Lanfarnesse so far lost and of the Amefin troops entering the fray behind them. Dys trampled men trying to bring pikes to bear, and never stopped, his breath coming hard, his huge shod hooves making nothing of living or dead, brush or uneven ground. Tristen laid about him with the sword, cut down men as he found them, making a path, sending Dys this way and that, to right or to left of oncoming enemies and threatening steel. His sword burned with white fire as it swung. Dys shone as if a white light were on them. The silver wrap glittered on the sword and left ghosts before his eyes.

Then they reached an astonishing vacancy in the noontime dark, confronting nothing but forest: they had come through the Elwynimʼs lines, and he reined Dys about to ride at the faces of men trying to flee — Aséyneddinʼs center had split in two, and riderless horses were bolting through the confusion, trampling light-armed men running for the woods in an unthinkable hammering of swords and axes. The wall of Amefin foot gnawed its way forward and heavy horse continued to wear at the outsides of Aséyneddinʼs split forces.

Wind skirled against their flank, blasting up dust. The banners of the Dragon were gouts of bright blood across a fatally bunched knot of black and white Elwynim standards, with the banner of Aséyneddin in the midst of it.

But a shadow swept over all of it as he watched, with nightmarish swiftness darkening the ground and the air itself. Cefwynʼs men and the surrounded enemy alike were in danger, and the approach of the Shadow to that place was like a nightmare he was doomed to watch and not reach, across a screen of terrified enemies whose very defeat and panic made them a barrier to his advance.

He laid about him with the sword, blind to all but that patch of threatened red within his visor. Cefwyn could not by any human means realize what menaced him — it might seem the passage of a cloud in the sky, salt sweat in the eyes, a blurring of vision in exertion. It wasnothing Cefwyn could see, or understand.

But it was there, in this world andthe other, an unnatural twilight that roused chill winds to lashat cloaks and the manes of horses. Tristen heard it taunting him. Men at last realizing their impending danger looked up, distracted from the battle. A few lifted swords or lances to challenge the cold and the dark, and the threatened Elwynim themselves looked up, afraid. The battle between Men began to dissolve in a stinging cloud of dust, the very air suddenly aboil with pieces of leaves, twigs, grass, bits of cloth, whole branches, flying banners.

— Hasufin! he shouted at the Wind. Here I am! Let them be! If you have no hostages — you cannot hope to govern me! I am listening to you! I shall listen so long as you can hold my attention! Talk to me, Hasufin! I am here!

Came the hollow rush of winds and the thin shriek of men and horses caught in its path as that blurring in the world turned toward him. Some Men stood to fight, and it rolled over them. Some Men fled, and it rolled over them the same.

In the shadow now was a white light behind which were only the trees of the forest and the black shapes of the fallen. In its path were still living Men — Cefwynʼs men; and to turn it from Cefwyn he could only taunt it, call it ahead, to roll over men he knew, men who had laughed with him, shared their provisions with him. Brogi was one, trying valiantly to reach his King. Kerdin Qwyllʼs-son was another, and his man with him.

— Come ahead! he called to the Wind, making himself heartless. Dys shivered under him and tried to turn from the blast as he had turned from no mortal enemy, but Tristen pressed him with heels and knees, making him face it, drawing the presence down on him — for now he could feel it — as willingly, as unresistingly, as he drew the light to his hands .

From behind him his own black banner flashed past him and to the fore of him. Andas Andasʼ-son was riding for the very heart of the Shadow, the Sihhë banner braced in his left hand, sword in his right. But he could not reach it. The black standard skewed back and aside on a blast of the wind, all but carrying Andasʼ-son from the saddle, and Andasʼ-son fought to hold it. His horse went down. The Shadow hesitated above him, and Andasʼ-son, rising, struck with his sword at empty air.

— Keep coming! Tristen shouted at it, taunted it, pleaded with it. Coward! Come to me!

Andasʼ-son, his horse and all went into a glare of white as if the world had torn like fabric and white nothingness shone through, pervisible, through a rip grown wider and closer. Numbing cold howled out of it as it grew. Horses reared up at the edge of it and fled in panic, trampling the dying and the dead as they escaped. Men left afoot cast down shields and weapons and ran until it passed over them and they lay dead .

“Mʼlord!” Uwen cried close behind him, and knowing Uwen was in its path, Tristenʼs heart went cold — for he was staring now directly into the rippling light-through-water burning at the very center of the rift. He was deafened by the roar of the winds. Dys, refusing to go, came up on his hind legs .