“You are far too patient for my liking, Blackbird.” Makho turned to the mortal once more. “Stay there and do not move again until the moon sets or I will have the giant pull off your skin. I cannot deal with you now when there is planning yet unfinished, but I will not forget.”
Nezeru knew better than to question Makho when he was angry, but he turned toward her as though she had voiced some doubt. “When real darkness comes, we will make these mortals fear us.” He shook his head. “I swear by the Garden left behind, you and the Shu’do-tkzayha are both more trouble than you are worth.”
“I can only speak for myself,” said Jarnulf, so lightly that he almost sounded cheerful. “But I am a tool, and a very useful one. A good leader should know how to use me.”
Makho did not rise to the bait. “I will use you until you break, if I so please,” he told the mortal in a flat, dead voice. “Like any slave. Then I will toss you aside and never think of you again. Never doubt that.”
“It is just that you do not seem to have enough warriors at your command to carelessly destroy one as skilled as I am,” Jarnulf said cheerfully.
Was he trying to provoke the chieftain? Nezeru could not understand such recklessness, but Makho seemed to have decided to let him live, at least for the present. She realized that if Makho and the Singer had indeed met in secret with a mortal, if that tale was not merely mischief-making by Jarnulf, she no longer understood anything about what the Hikeda’ya were doing in this strange land.
Help me, Mother of All, she thought, half prayer, half lament. I want only to do your will. Help me see my path.
“Do not worry for me,” Makho told Jarnulf. “I have all that I need. My blood flows for the queen, and I was given this task from her holy hand. I swear by my Talon oath and my ancestor’s fabled sword that the mortal scum below will not take us, alive or dead. And by the time the sun rises again, they will weep over their own fallen.” The chieftain now turned toward Nezeru, his eyes as dark as onyx beads in the white mask of his face. “Others have doubted me or misjudged me before this—Hikeda’ya and mortals alike. They are all dead.” He slapped at his sword hilt. “As I said, we wait only until the moon sets. Then the blood of the animals who stole our land will be spilled across this hillside. A great, red river of the foul stuff.”
23
Testament of the White Hand
Farewell, O my children! Farewell, O my wife!
I am called to defend what I love more than life
For no man who is true hides when battle horns blow
And the fields of his fathers are befouled by the foe
We shall push back this trespass or we’ll die where we stand,
But we’ll give not an inch of our fair Erkynland!
The young harper Rinan was doing his best. It was a spirited rendition of “Fair Erkynland,” and his clear voice floated sweetly through the chill evening air, though he sang to a group of foot soldiers who would not look at him. If anything, they seemed to huddle closer to the fire as he approached, and many of their faces were tight with anger.
Farewell to my family! My neighbors, farewell!
I cannot turn back from the war’s sounding knell
I am called to the battle, so must rush to the field
And there make a stand, and to no stranger yield
We shall push back this trespass or we’ll die where we stand
But we’ll give not an inch of our fair Erkynland!
The king rode a little nearer. The first soldiers to recognize him scrambled to their feet and then fell to their knees, chain mail clinking; others quickly followed suit. Rinan stopped singing as he turned to see what had caused the disruption, his harp ringing on for the length of a heart’s beat before he, too, took a knee and bowed, his face pale as death.
As Simon looked down at the tops of all those bent heads, he felt a pang in his heart unrelated to his fears about the upcoming struggle. What happens when everyone who knew me before is gone? he wondered. All that will be left is a world full of people who only know me as the king. “Oh, saints preserve us,” he said at last, “do get up, men. You don’t want to get your breeks wet just before a battle. You’ll have reason enough to wet them later on.”
Some of the fighting men merely goggled at this, but a few laughed as if against their will, and soon many of the others were smiling as well: the Commoner King as many called him was well-liked by his soldiers. Simon passed a few words with them, naming a couple that he recognized, letting them know in all ways he could find that they were his men, that he valued their lives.
“Remember,” he told them, “it’s harder to go slow. It’s harder to keep up your courage without running and shouting. But that’s what you’ll need to do. The Norns are clever, but here is a good joke—we Erkynlanders are too stupid to care! We’ll have them boxed like a hare, boys, you’ll see.” He turned to Rinan, who was still kneeling. “Do me a kindness, will you, harper? Give me a little company as I go around the camp.”
“I—I have no horse, sire.”
Simon climbed down from the saddle. “Nothing to worry. I’ll lead mine.”
They walked for a while in silence, boots crunching through the occasional patch of snow. Every fifty paces or so a fire burned, mostly small, the pits dug in haste. Each had its contingent of soldiers, with others loitering between the campfire stations. They made something above eight hundred men all together, all the troops Sir Kenrick could spare without leaving vulnerable the camp back up the road.
“They don’t really like songs about blood and killing and such,” he said at last.
“Majesty?” the harper asked. “I mean—I beg your pardon, Majesty?”
“Not just before it’s actually going to happen. Nobody wants to hear about men dying when men are about to die.”
“Do you mean the song I was singing, sire?”
“No, I tell a lie. The Rimmersmen do. They’re mad for it. The night before a battle they drink until they can barely stand, then they sing songs about hacking off people’s heads and the death of the gods. Giants killing snakes! And they’re not even pagans anymore.” He laughed. “God save me, you should have seen them. Duke Isgrimnur, dear old Isgrimnur, he was usually the loudest.”
The harper smiled, but it lacked conviction.
“No, you must think of some songs that will make the men merry instead,” Simon said. “A little teary-eyed? That’s well enough, too. Songs about girls always go down well. And home. Almost everyone likes those. Do you see what I mean?”
“I . . . I think I do, Majesty.”
“Good. We’re all on this road together, young Rinan. We all want to get back home, so we all do what we can to get us there safely. You have an important part to play, young man, just like the rest.”
? ? ?
The harper was still walking beside him as Simon made his way toward the largest group of men, clumped at the eastern base of the steep hill. He had already had one visit from Eolair and two from Captain Marshal Kenrick. Jeremias had even come to inspect the king’s armor, and had sworn he would return with a better tasset that would not hang askew.
“Aren’t you tired, Majesty?” Rinan asked. “It is past the middle watches of night.”
“My men are all awake—or most of them, at least. Never underestimate a soldier’s ability to steal some sleep. In the Thrithings war all those years ago I saw men sleep standing up, waiting for the trumpet to blow.” He nodded. “But sleeping or not, while they wait, I wait with them.” The king looked over his army. “Do you wonder that most of our forces are set on this side of the hill?”
The weary harper tried to be attentive. By the last of the moon’s light, his face had a sickly look. “Sire?”
“It’s because the other side of the hill is steep. Too steep even for Norns, I’d say, and Eolair and the soldiers agree. No way off until most of the way down. So we have set only a few scouts there to watch. But we have many pickets up there above us—” he started to point up the slope, then remembered he might be observed, even in the near-dark, “—who’ll let us know if the Norns are coming. Then, you see, the rest of the men can be up the hill here and coming around from the sides as well. We even have fowling nets to keep those sly creatures from slipping past us.” Simon was rather proud of the nets, which had been his idea. He would never forget the stories he’d heard from Josua and the others, so long ago now, of being hunted by the White Foxes through the Aldheorte Forest, how the pale devils moved quickly and silently as cats. “And speaking of those pale devils, there may not be more than a few of them,” he said suddenly. “We only know for certain that there are at least two, because Sir Irwyn saw them. Irwyn’s a sensible man.”
Rinan nodded. He was wide-eyed now—mostly from fear, was Simon’s guess—and kept peering nervously up at the forested hillside.