Crown of Vengeance (Dragon Prophecy) (42 page)

*   *   *

“Why do we stop so early in the day?”

The servants had barely finished setting his pavilion before Ladyholder Glorthiachiel strode into it, glaring at her son. “Is it not enough that we move at such speed one would assume we carried vital messages? Now you propose to sit and do nothing!”

“And how is my betrothed? Sick with joy at this return to her homeland?” Runacarendalur asked.

“Were there anyone else in the Line Direct I could trust upon Oronviel’s throne, I would slit her throat rather than listen to another moment of her complaints,” Ladyholder Glorthiachiel said. “At least Nataranweiya’s brat never whined. Now. Why do we stop?”

“Why, so I may engage Oronviel at dawn,” Runacarendalur said, waving vaguely in the direction of the enemy. “Thoromarth has brought, if not Vieliessar’s army, then
an
army. You will be pleased to know Oronviel has made alliance with Araphant as well.”

“Impossible!” Ladyholder Glorthiachiel snapped.

“Possible,” Runacarendalur replied, “and fact. Unless you believe Thoromarth has somehow stolen the War Prince’s banner from Old Luthilion and garbed a dozen Oronviel knights in his colors.”

Ladyholder Glorthiachiel regarded him through narrowed eyes for a long moment, then gestured peremptorily to a servant to bring her a chair. “Wine,” she said, seating herself and shaking out the folds of her voluminous riding skirts. Runacarendalur served her himself; the pavilion was set, but nothing was unpacked yet. He located the chest he sought, took possession of a bottle and two goblets, filled both cups, handed one to Ladyholder Glorthiachiel, and seated himself on a chest.

“How many ride against us?” she asked after she’d tasted her cup and silently let him know the drink was not to her liking.

Runacarendalur hesitated, but any knight in the camp could estimate the size of Oronviel’s force as easily as he had, and Ladyholder Glorthiachiel’s personal guard would tell her if he did not. “Our forces seem equally matched,” he said reluctantly.

“And yet, when you proposed this expedition, you said Oronviel could only bring two thousand—at most—to the field,” Ladyholder Glorthiachiel said.

“Obviously Elrinonion Swordmaster should have tried harder to get scouts across Oronviel’s border who’d report back,” Runacarendalur retorted. “The army is there. We can fight, or we can run away.”

“Do not say to me I have given birth to a coward,” Ladyholder Glorthiachiel answered haughtily. “Thoromarth is beguiled by that Sanctuary-bred monster. Atholfol’s forces will flee the field rather than fight for Oronviel. And Araphant we will deal with in due time.”

Runacarendalur inclined his head. “It will of course be just as you say, Mother.”

*   *   *

One candlemark passed, then two, as Oronviel’s army continued to advance. It moved—as did any army on the march—at a slow and measured pace in order to spare the destriers’ strength.

But it did not stop.

Runacarendalur sat his riding palfrey, watching the enemy advance. Only a couple of miles now separated the front of their column from his camp. Two of the banners the knights-pennion carried signified War Princes on the field: Araphant’s and Oronviel’s. Runacarendalur had never faced Lord Luthilion—Luthilion had last taken the field in Runacarendalur’s greatfather’s time—but the gleam of his white hair was unmistakable as he rode beside Araphant’s standard. Runacarendalur glanced at Ivrithir’s banner, but Lord Atholfol was not on the field.
Why do his knights ride here if he does not lead them?
Runacarendalur wondered. He frowned, puzzled, then set the thought aside for now.
And here is Oronviel.
Thoromarth was a familiar sight in pearl-white armor, mounted on his grey stallion. Runacarendalur frowned again. Thoromarth was riding his destrier, not a palfrey. Everyone in the front rank was.

Between Thoromarth and Luthilion, on a bay so pale its coat was nearly golden, rode …

Her. That must be Vieliessar.

At first he’d thought the woman might be Thoromarth’s standard-bearer, until she leaned sideways in her saddle to touch his shoulder with the easy familiarity of a ruling prince to a favored knight. Thoromarth said something in return and she laughed, gesturing at the army that rode behind them.

I did not expect her to come armored as a knight to this battlefield.

His mother had been sure Vieliessar was merely a mask for Thoromarth’s ambition, and even if she were not, it was inconceivable she would ride to war. Yet here she was. She wore silver-enameled armor and the white surcoat with the red otter that marked her as a knight of Oronviel. The bay destrier she rode danced and fretted beneath her hand, yet she controlled him effortlessly.

When the advancing column finally stopped, Runacarendalur was relieved. He watched as it split, then split again, spreading and reforming behind the first line as gracefully as if the whole of the army danced.
They do not wish to be caught unawares while they make camp,
he decided.

Then Thoromarth spoke again and Vieliessar took up her helm and slid it over her head. Runacarendalur could not say why watching her give her helm the small back-and-forth twist to lock it into place made him feel so uneasy. It was something he’d done himself a thousand times. More.

And so has she
. Runacarendalur frowned.
Why does she helm if they are to make camp?

Then—impossibly—he heard the mellow dangerous song of warhorns.

Right flank: wheel. Left flank: hold. Center: advance.

Against all sense and custom, Oronviel was attacking.

Now.

He spurred his palfrey and galloped back to the camp, shouting for the alarm to be sounded, for his knights to arm themselves. Some had heard the enemy warhorns. Most had not. And only a handful were in armor.
This is madness!
Runacarendalur thought in outrage.
The Code of Battle demands challenge be made and answered before the engagement begins! Not a random attack the moment you catch sight of your enemy! This is none of Thoromarth’s doing! Vieliessar fights as if she is a hedgerow bandit!

He reached his tent and flung himself from his saddle. Helecanth’s pavilion was pitched beside his own, and she’d come running at the sound of his horse. Runacarendalur noted with despair that his guard captain was as unready to fight as his entire army.

“My lord?” she said.

Runacarendalur opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again as the first of the Caerthalien horns sounded:
To horse, to horse, arm yourself, to battle …

“I shall bring Gwaenor,” she said, and took off for the horselines at a run.

“My armor!” Runacarendalur shouted as he entered his tent.
If they had reached us before the camp was set it would have been a disaster,
he thought numbly. Only the flanks and the vanguard had been riding in armor, and no one had been riding destriers.
But they meant to attack the moment they saw us.

Nithiach, his chamber page, came rushing out of the pavilion’s inner chamber, a polishing cloth in his hands. Runacarendalur shouted again for his armor and began stripping off his clothes. He struggled with his boots for a moment before sitting down on a chest to yank them off.

His arming page was nowhere to be found. Nithiach would have to serve; there was not time to find Arnarth. As Nithiach returned with Runacarendalur’s aketon and padded leather trews, the booming of the war drums overlaid the discordant and clashing sound of the horns.

Lengiathion Warlord always said battles could be won or lost by the speed a knight could arm, and I never believed him.…

He struggled into the complex elements of his armor, swearing at Nithiach in his desperate need to be armed, to be
away
. He nearly shouted at Helecanth to leave when she entered, followed by her arming page.

“They advance.” She had to shout to be heard over the uproar: horns and drums and knights shouting and the clatter of metal and the screams of overexcited horses. “I have ordered Ladyholder Glorthiachiel’s guard to move her wagon back and to keep her and Princess Nanduil inside, even if they must tie them hand and foot and nail the doors of the wagon shut.”

“They’d probably rather face Oronviel,” Runacarendalur muttered. “Good. How many—?”
How many can we send against them at once?

“Five hundred,” Helecanth said grimly. “Enough to hold them until the rest arm. They will stand—if you are there.”

Runacarendalur settled his helm on his head. As he gave it the small twist to lock it into place, the vivid image of Vieliessar doing just the same filled his mind.

*   *   *

War was a thing of beauty. Runacarendalur had always believed this. The clash of two lines of knights meeting at full gallop, the moments of bravery and skill that were the fruit of a lifetime of training, the joyful dance of death when two knights fought each other as if no one else existed—He was a prince of Caerthalien, a knight, a warrior: he carried the honor of his House upon his shoulders each time he rode into battle.

But today was different. He’d been given no time to scout the battlefield, to meet with his commanders, to tell each where they must stand and where they must go, to settle the signals that would allow him to deploy hundreds of knights as easily as he flexed the fingers of his hand. Instead, he galloped from camp with barely a sixth of his army and only one thought in his mind: push Oronviel back and buy his
komen
time to take the field. He shouted orders to Helecanth as Gwaenor and Rochonan galloped side by side, and Helecanth put her warhorn to her lips and relayed them to the knights that followed:
Break for the
tuathal
flank. Force it back into the center.

It was a proven strategy, especially when the enemy could not call up reserves to replace his losses. Since Thoromarth had not been able to position his reserves off the field, effectively he had no reserves—all his force was committed at the same time. The flanking positions were traditionally a fast moving force, meant to sweep an enemy’s fighters into the center where they could be hammered by heavy cavalry. If Runacarendalur could force Thoromarth’s
tuathal
flank into the body of his main force, he could not only destroy the flanking force but attack the center at a weak point. The main body of the column would have no place to go: if it retreated, the
deosil
wing would be behind it.

It should have worked.

Instead, as soon as Runacarendalur’s advance force was fully committed to an attack on the
tuathal
side, the whole of Thoromarth’s force spun as if it were a millstone turning on its axis. The
tuathal
flank was not forced against the center: the center swung right as the
tuathal
flank retreated in good order and the
deosil
flank elongated and galloped across what had—seconds before—been the center. In another few moments Runacarendalur’s advance force would be trapped between the two flanking forces while the former center line—now an enormously over-full
deosil
flank—continued its inexorable advance on his camp.

It was a stunning innovation in tactics.

Thoromarth could not have done this,
Runacarendalur realized, even as his troop spun and struck the wing of Oronviel’s army that was coming up behind them. He could no longer see the whole of the battlefield. In moments, it had become a dizzying blur of knights and flashing swords.

And it is but four candlemarks to sunset, and how are you to shape the course of the battle if you are in it?

From the moment he’d proposed this expedition against Oronviel, Runacarendalur had held in his mind the image of how it would go: a raiding party cutting a swathe of destruction across the land from the border towers to the walls of Oronviel’s Great Keep. There he would face the force Oronviel placed in the field against him; at the sight of the red pennions flying from Caerthalien’s standards, the knights of Ivrithir would flee to their own domain.…

That was the dream, and he had not been willing to let go of it. And so he had led his knights into battle as if this were a raiding party. It did not matter that there was no plan of battle to oversee, no order of battle for him to shape and direct, nor that his knights would have been thrown into even greater disorder if he had not led them himself. He had made a disastrous miscalculation—and Caerthalien would pay the price of it.

Father wished me to bring back the army intact.…

That was already impossible. But if he could slay Vieliessar, the act would redeem at least a part of his folly. He risked a glance at the larger force surrounding him. Yes. There. The standard of Oronviel. She would be beneath it.

He began to fight his way toward it.

*   *   *

It had taken Vieliessar two days to reach her army, and two days more for her army to reach Caerthalien’s force. Lord Luthilion had announced his desire to fight at her side—audacious, for it would show Caerthalien Araphant’s disloyalty—and rather than subject the aged War Prince to the long and grueling ride to her western border, she’d told Celeharth to Send to her Lightborn and bring Lord Luthilion west by Mage Door. Then Vieliessar rode west as fast as she could. It was frustrating, for there was a Flower Forest half a day’s ride from Greenstone Tower, and she might have walked into it and out into Mornenamei in the same candlemark. But accompanied by her
komen,
she could not—she could not raise the matter of changing what the Lightborn were permitted to do at the same moment Caerthalien was invading in force.

She left Sorodiarn behind at the first change of horses. The journey was not a matter of pleasant rides and soft beds, but of galloping from manor house to manor house, bringing word of the attack and leaving with fresh mounts. Messengers from Thoromarth, from Rithdeliel, from Gunedwaen met her on the road, and so she learned her army already marched to meet Caerthalien. Lord Thoromarth had put them underway the moment word had come to Oronviel Keep.