Janny Wurts - The Curse of the Mistwraith

Pesquil seemed in rare high spirits. He spat his wad of bark and playfully tossed his bone-hilted dagger with its peculiar blade, curved and sharp on both edges. Since the need had passed for surprise and silence, he grew expansive, calling boisterous jokes to his lieutenants.

The men, too, seemed ebullient. Too drained to attend to their talk, Lysaer gave cursory study to the high ground where they stopped. The sun’s angle had lowered, throwing the ravine into premature twilight. Under shaded rim-walls and deeper cover of palings and thickets clustered the painted hide walls of the clan tents. Faintly, from the inside, came the wailing cry of an infant, swiftly muffled.

Lysaer found a broad old maple and rested against the trunk while the men whistled and laughed and kindled fires. Too battered to join the activity, he stayed, while the arrows were wrapped and the bows strung and the wool tips set soaking in oil.

‘All right.’ Hands on hips, his lantern jaw outthrust in broken profile against the shimmers of black smoke on the wind, Pesquil delivered his order. ‘Fire them out.’

Lots were drawn. The losers, grumbling, chose bows. Fighting an insidious detachment that felt like the onset of delirium, Lysaer hardly noticed the arrows crack down until the reek of burning hide wafted out of the ravine. The tents were well aflame. Heat beat in waves from the fissure. Orange light played across the rocks, and above the grotto, green leaves began to shrivel and wilt. Lysaer closed his eyes against the glare, vaguely aware of screaming. The archers now fired to kill infants, and the cries of bereaved mothers beat and shrilled against his ears.

Pesquil’s tart sarcasm punched through. ‘You seem just a touch overcome.’

Lysaer pushed straight and forced his eyes back to clear focus. In fact, there was a lot of screaming, in pitch and timbre quite different from hand to hand battle had caused earlier; neither were these the incomprehending cries of newborns. Sickness fled before anger.

‘You aren’t killing them cleanly,’ Lysaer accused. He shoved hard away from the tree.

‘Killing them?’ Pesquil grinned, startled to savage delight. ‘That wasn’t quite the idea. Not for the pretty women, anyway. My men accomplished what Etarra’s garrison couldn’t. Do you think they haven’t earned their bit of sport?’

Lysaer pushed past toward the rimrocks. The sound of a slap ricocheted up from the canyon. A man guffawed, while a woman’s voice wept obscenities.

‘Better gag her,’ someone advised in cheerful encouragement. ‘She’d gnaw your face off for sheer spite.’

A glance was enough. Lysaer wheeled back, white to the lips, and possessed by a frightening control. Coldly, clearly, he said, ‘Call them off.’

Pesquil stood and stroked his crescent knife. ‘In due time, prince. Not to worry. My men aren’t picked for sentiment. They can kill well enough when their pleasure’s met. We won’t be bringing home any doxies.’

More laughter erupted, and sobbing cries that seemed barely more than a child’s. Lysaer never flicked a muscle. ‘Call your men back.’ He took a fast breath. ‘Or I will.’

‘Such scruple!’ Pesquil crooned. Then, as Lysaer broke from stillness, the captain’s mockery fled and his manner abruptly went stony. ‘Man, man, you’re serious.’ He reached out in swift purpose and snatched back the shoulder tightly strapped under wrappings the exact instant Lysaer called out.

Bone grated under his fingers. Lysaer doubled with a gasp, his eyes wide black with pain and fury.

‘My men wouldn’t take your command,’ Pesquil warned. The crescent knife remained in his right fist, its angle now openly threatening. ‘Prince.’

Lysaer chopped with his good arm and broke the headhunter captain’s hold. The blade at his midriff as well had been air, for all the attention he spared it. ‘ Call them off !’

‘Ath, you soft fool.’ As if he reasoned with an idiot, Pesquil said, ‘You want the barbarian clans dead, do you not? And the neck of one black-handed sorcerer? Well, leave my men to their business! If they don’t force the girls and make plenty of noise, how else d’you think we’re going to draw their eight hundred odd fathers and brothers out of cover and into reach of our weapons?’

‘You’ve done this before,’ Lysaer gritted, wrenched by the spasm of abused muscles.

‘Oh, many times. Though I admit, never in quite such choice quantity.’ The sneer was back. Touched with sweat, Pesquil’s pockmarks glistened orange. On the floor of the ravine the tents threw up shimmering curtains of flame. Nothing alive remained inside their cover. Beyond the fires fringing the guy ropes, outside a circle of red-soaked and motionless bundles, men whooped and tore buckskins with abandon. Pesquil’s gaze lowered to his knife, still pointed at the prince. ‘It’s a time-proven tactic, your Grace. ’

Lysaer straightened, breathing hard. Sunlight through the tree crowns played over his gold head, and a breeze flickered mote touched his grazed cheek to gilt. The mauling he had taken had spoiled his elegance. Nothing distinguished remained about his ripped surcoat and mud-crusted mail or the bruises glazed with sweat that darkened neck and chin and temple. Yet a forceful sense of majesty clothed him all the same, that made even Pesquil reassess.

The s’Ilessid prince laid no hand on his sword in dispute. He weighed his case and made judgement in the solitary arrogance of a king. Then he turned his back on the silver crescent blade and called upon his birthborn gift of light.

His bolt sheared the grotto like bladed lightning and slammed in bursting brilliance through the charred and blackened leather of the tents. Flash-fire exploded. Sparks flew and a barrage of deep-throated thunder smote the air. Where hides had flamed, nothing burned any longer. If no one had been harmed by the blast, still, the ground showed a black, seared circle, while toppled kingposts flaked with ash trailed sullen smoke over the previously broken bodies of little children.

From the grotto, the screaming had ended. Men in the act of lust felt engorged flesh shrivel from the heat of ravished girls, while in stunned terror they scrambled back and took stock of wisped hair and blisters and outer clothing lightly singed upon their bodies.

Into stupefied stillness, across someone’s low whimpers of fear, Lysaer delivered crisp orders. ‘Townsmen! Cover your nakedness and stand aside. Let any who are clad form a shield-ring and herd every girl and woman inside. Let none of your company handle them except as necessary. For peril of your lives, do as I say.’

‘You can’t let them go,’ Pesquil protested. A tremor threaded his voice, and all his sour mockery had vanished.

Lysaer looked at him. ‘No.’ As devoid of contempt as Dharkaron Avenger, he added, ‘But I will end them cleanly.’

‘To what purpose, your Grace?’ Stubborn in recovery, Pesquil flung his knife hilt deep into the dirt. ‘We’ve clan menfolk still left to deal with.’

‘They’ll come.’ Lysaer’s dispassionate regard flicked back to the grotto and stayed there as the half-stripped girls and women were shoved tightly into one group. ‘I’ll draw in Steiven’s barbarians. When I do, be sure of this, the s’Ffalenn bastard with his shadows will be unable not to come with them.’

Three Valleys

Streaming sweat from an arduous sprint, the runner sent from the west valley arrives at the breastworks where Caolle and the bulk of Deshir’s clansmen fight unassisted by sorceries or flooded rivers, against Etarra’s right flanking division who outnumber them three to one. ‘Tell Lord Steiven,’ he cries, gasping, ‘I’ve come from our liege. Arithon said you would know what he meant, that the disaster he foresaw has not been stopped…’