Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [104]
“So she does, but Elessario only lives in one of them. We have a lure for our hawk, to keep her close.”
Evandar raised one arm and yelled for a halt. Off to their left, the river had sunk and dwindled to a white-water stream, cutting a canyon some twenty feet below the road. Off to their right, the sun hung swollen, as if it swam through the smoke of some enormous fire. Ahead lay plains, as flat and seeming-infinite as those in the Westlands, stretching on and on to a horizon where more clouds—or was it smoke?—billowed like a frozen wave, all copper-red from the bloated sun.
“Ah, the battle plain,” Evandar remarked. “Where once we met, you and I, to discuss this thing or that.”
Shaetano drew back his lips in what might have been a grin.
“I don’t see Alshandra’s rebels anywhere about,” Evandar went on. “If it weren’t for the iron, I’d wonder if she took them down to join the Horsekin army. That would be a pretty sight at Cengarn’s walls, her pack of monsters all mingling with the ugliest flesh and blood I’ve ever seen.”
“My lord?” Menw said. “If it was the nighthawk who came to spy, couldn’t they all be hiding in the clouds?”
“Counsel like that earned you your name, sure enough.” Evandar raised his silver horn. “Let us go see.”
When he blew five notes, the army charged forward onto the battle plain, but as their horses galloped, they climbed, racing higher and higher into the sky, not flying, exactly, rather blown by some huge wind like a river of dead leaves whirled into the air ahead of an autumn storm, or perhaps the army had become the crack of a huge and glittering whip, snaking through the air. Up and up they rode, swirling round on a huge spiral through the coppery smoke until all at once they burst into clear air and silver light.
When Evandar called the halt, it seemed their horses stood on a solid surface, but round their feet and legs billowed mist. Ahead of and all round the army towered huge pillars of cloud, as if they stood in a forest of white brochs. Here and there among them, sunlight fell in golden shafts, while above shone broken tiles of blue sky. The pillars and brochs were drifting, though, some moving one way, some another, merging only to break apart again as they sailed through the air. Shaetano turned in his saddle and stared.
“They could be anywhere,” he whispered. “We could hunt here forever.”
“Indeed, brother? Then we’d best get on our way.”
Lord Tren’s warband had been assigned a campground on the flat not far from the east ridge—a place of honor, or so Tren had been told, but he suspected it of being merely a place where they could be watched. During the abortive assault on the city, Rakzan Hir-li had kept the Deverry men back, too, out of the fighting, as if perhaps he wondered if they’d try to desert right over the town walls. The day after the attack, Tren, along with the other captains, met to discuss the day’s fighting. Although everyone treated him cordially, so few of the Horsekin spoke his language that he had no true idea of what they might be thinking of him. When the council ended, just as night was falling, he fled their company to join his warband in its camp.
Some of these men had ridden for him and been housed in his small dun, but the majority had once been his brother’s men, come over to him after Matyc’s death. They sat huddled round their cooking fires, saying nothing to one another, though a few men sat by themselves, staring out at nothing. His captain, Ddary, a stolid man with close-cropped brown hair, joined him as he walked through the tents. Although Tren tried to speak with the men, most merely listened, mouths set and tight, staring at the ground as if they were waiting for him to be finished and gone.
“You can’t blame them, my lord,” Ddary whispered. “We all saw what happened to Cadry, tied up like that and stabbed. They let him bleed to death like a beast.”
His voice ached with reproach. Tren glanced round, wondering how many of his men had been subverted for spies. The Horsekin made it a policy to sponsor