4

All day since before chill dawn the red-jacketed riders with their striped packs had come down the water-stairs toward the lake, guiding their mounts along the horse ramps. Shouted orders carried far in the still, cold air; captains perspired despite the frost steaming from their bellowing mouths. Great straining pulleys lowered painted wagons toward the ferries; horses reared and laughed; harried ostlers attempted to count off from lists, screaming at the watermen, whom no fee could hurry.

The girl had pulled and hauled since morning, somehow intensely elated by the first winey wrong-way breezes of the year; now the hard sunlight cast unaccustomed glitter on the stirred waters and heated her shorn blond head. She laughed out loud to see them struggle with their war there on the bank. Her laugh was lost in the uproar; whips snapped, and the oxen on the far bank lowed in misery as they began to turn the creaking winches once again.

Soldiers sitting atop piled bundles above her called down pleasant obscenities as she pushed to the forward end of the laden barge. She climbed up a crate that had Redhand’s open-palm sign on it in new red paint, and, shielding her eyes, looked up to where the four tongues of bridges came out of the High City’s gate-mouths. She thought probably there, at the gate called Goforth, the generals would come out—yes, there, for now, as she looked, their banners all burst forth from the Citadel onto the bridge-stairs, as though a giant had blown out from the gate a handful of petals. She couldn’t see faces, but for sure they must be there, for there was Redhand’s open palm, and the dried-blood red of Senlin marked with ancient words; the soldiers and the City cheered them, and she cheered too, laughing at the thought that the bridge might break under their great weight of pride and drop them, leaving their banners only, light as wind.

Something colder than his cold armor took hold on Redhand’s heart, there where he stood among the gay flags with his brother Younger. Through Goforth his father, Old Redhand, with harsh pulls at the reins, forced his warhorse Dark Night. Through the cloud of banners before the gate, through the ribboned throng of riders, hearing no salutations, up to where his sons stood.

“Is our House all here?” he said, and then said again, over the great-throated war viols’ endless chants.

“Yes,” Redhand answered him. “Father…”

“Then give me the baton.”

So many things, hurtful or too grownup for the child, had Redhand ever given up to his father: but never with such black presage, too cold for anger, as now when he lifted the slim general’s stick to his father’s outstretched hand.

“You can still stay,” he growled. Both their hands held the baton. “Stay and see to the City…”

“You see to it,” his father said. “Give it to me.”

Redhand released it; Old Redhand tucked it into his sash and leaned out toward Younger, whose look clung desperately to his father’s face. Old Redhand pulled Younger to him with a mailed hand, kissed him. He kissed him again, slapped his cheek lightly without word or smile. Turned away and tore from his old neck the Redhand chain with the City seal hung from it.

“Senlin!” he called out in a voice not his own. Red Senlin stood in his stirrups and waved to him. “Would you be King?” Red Senlin drew his sword, pointed Outward. Old Redhand turned to Redhand his son. He tossed him the chain. “Take care,” he said. “Watch well.”

Too proud to dismount to cross the two generals walked their heavy steeds with infinite care over the swaying bridge. Redhand watched their exertions till he could bear no more, and ran, his heart full, up the stairs, through Goforth, into the silent City that the chain he held made him master of.

That evening the first light snow was dusting Redsdown, blown in from the Drum. From a window in the high headland tower that marked Reds-down’s edge, Caredd and her mother watched the Protectors’ horses, and Fauconred and his redjackets, and the horsegatherers, and the Visitor too, gather on the rutted road toward the mountains and the far-off City. They were dim in the gusts of fine blown snow; there was the Visitor in his brown Endwife’s cloak. The horsegatherers flicked their lashes, and the company unwound, their sharp hooves loud on the new-frozen ground.

“See how he drives them,” Mother Caredd said.

“Fauconred?” Caredd asked.

“Yes, he is driven too.”

“Who drives them, Mother?”

“Why, Rizna, Daughter,” said her mother. “Surely you see him there, so tall, with his black eye sockets, and the sickle hung on his neck… See how he makes them step along!”

“Mother…”

“Like some great raggedy shepherd driving silly sheep… What great steps he takes!”

“Mother, there’s no such thing there.” Yet she looked hard, holding her throat where the blood beat.

“Why does he drive them, where, for what? See them look back, and then ride on for fear…”

“There’s nothing there, Mother! Stop!” She strained to see the caravan, strung out along the road; they were shadows already, and then disappeared in a mist of blown snow. Mother Caredd began to put up her hair with many bone pins…

If snow fell heavily in the mountains as they went up the high road Cityward, they would be delayed till long after Yearend, holed up in some bleak lodge or pilgrim house of the Grays, and Fauconred didn’t want that at all. He hurried as fast as he could through the black, leafless forest, had men ride ahead and behind to watch for the Just: these mountains were their castles and cities, they knew the rocky highlands and had a name for every thick ravine, could appear and disappear in them like the dream faces Fauconred saw in the knotted treeboles. He harried his riders till he was hoarse with it, and would have pushed them on through the nights, if he hadn’t feared breaking some valued leg or his own neck in the dark even more than he feared the sounds and silence beyond the vague, smoky hole his campfires made.

He told himself, he told his men, that what made him afraid was ambush, the Guns of the Just. But the horsegatherers, Drumskin men, had their own tales of these mountain forests, and told them endlessly around the fire: stories of the Hollowed. “My grandfather’s half-brother was taking horses to the City once, on this same road, and saw a thing, about dawn, running along beside the road, in the trees, making no sound, a thing—a thing as fearful as if you saw a great hooded cloak stand up and walk with no one in it, my grandfather’s half-brother said…” The Hollowed, they said, were the bodies of the Possessors, abandoned by the Possessors themselves to their own malignant dead wanderings when the Strengths had driven the Possessors from the homeplaces of men into the Deep. Here the bodies wandered, Hollowed, unable to rest, empty cups still holding the dregs of poison, drinking up what souls they could seize on to sustain them, insect, animal, man.

Most days now they could see, far and dim, higher than any reaching crag, Inviolable in its high seat, placid and strong; even thought they heard, one cold still day, its low bells ring. But then they turned a twisting mile down the valley, between two high naked rocks men called the Knees, and the weather grew enough warmer to raise thick, bitter fogs; Inviolable was lost. By dawn on Lowday, the day before Yearend, the day of the Possessors’ Eve, they were deep in the river Wanderer’s rocky home.

Somewhere below their narrow way, Wanderer chased herself noisily through her halls, echoing in flumes and gorges, spitting at cave-mouths; but they could see nothing of her, for her breath was white and dense almost as haysmoke, and cold as Finn.

Fauconred wouldn’t? stop. It was baffling and frightening to try to pass this way in a fog, and hurry too, with the river’s roar filling up your head; but it was worse to stop, so that the horses, stuck on a ledge, might panic and leap. It took all his strength and lungs to force them further down, to where at last the high wall beside them broke and a pass led down away, high-sided, obscure, but a pass: the Throat they called it, and it spoke with Wanderer’s great voice even as it swallowed them. The Throat took away their own voices too, when they were inside it, amplified them in a weird way, so that every man who spoke looked behind him with a start for the source of his own words.

It was the Visitor, whose ears had proved sharp as a dog’s, who first heard the other horsemen in the pass.

“It’s only the Throat,” Fauconred said, “our own hooves echoing.”

“No. Make them stop, and listen. Down there, coming up.”

Fauconred tried to read an imagining fear in the Visitor’s face, but there was only attention. The fear was his own. He shouted a halt, and the horsegatherers sang out to still the herd. Then they waited for their own echoes to cease.

It was there, the noise of someone somewhere. The Visitor said ahead, Fauconred said behind, the horsegatherers and guard stared wildly here and there, their panic spreading to the horses and confusing every ear. Mist drawn into the Throat went by in ragged cloaks to hide and then reveal them to each other. And then they saw, far down the Throat, gray shapes moving at a mad pace toward them, gesticulating, pale as smoke.

A rasp of steel unsheathing. Fauconred knew that if they were men, they must be charged, hard, for he could not be forced back through the Throat and live. If they were not men… He shouted his redjackets forward and charged hard, hoping they dared follow.

The pale riders drew closer, coalescing out of fog and thunder of hooves. For sure they were men, yes, living men—were—were a war party, arms drawn, were a Red party—Redhand! “Redhand!” he shouted, and twisted his mount hard. They nearly collided. Fauconred just managed to keep his riders from tangling with his master’s. He turned to laugh with Redhand out of relief, and looked into his face, a gray, frightening mask, eyes wide and mad. “Redhand…” He seemed a man, yet as Fauconred watched him stare around him unseeing, drawn sword clutched tight, he felt a chill of fear: Hollowed… some dream shape they could take…

The form Redhand spoke. “Turn your men.” The harsh voice was an exhausted croak, expressionless. “Make for the Outward road.”

Fauconred saw the iron chain of the Redhands hung on his neck. “What’s happened?”

“War with the Queen.”

“Red Senlin…”

“Slain. Slain before Forgetful… Why don’t you turn?” he asked without inflection. Someone came up suddenly beside Fauconred, and Redhand flung out his sword arm with a cry: “Who is it… what…”

“The one I sent to tell you of. The… Visitor.”

“Keep him for right’s sake from me!…” The Visitor drew back, but Redhand’s wide eyes still fixed him. Fauconred thought to speak, did not. There was a moment of freak silence in the Throat, and Redhand burst into strange, racking sobs.

He hadn’t slept in days, had pressed every man he could into service, had flung them through the forest without mercy, once turning rebellious laggards at sword-point… Fauconred, taking command reluctantly, coaxed them all back through the Throat the way Redhand had come, had camp made and a precious cask broached, that calmed anger and fear both: and while Blem had his say, Drink-up, Sleep-fast, No-tomorrow, Fauconred drew from his master the tale, in words drunk with weariness and grief.

The Queen had led the Red army a quickwing chase across the plains toward the barren Drumsedge, Red Senlin desperately trying to cut her off from the Inward roads and her Outward strength both, until, weary with chase and no battle, he had made for Forgetful, watch castle of the Edge, where the garrison owed him. They had reached it Finnsweek Eve. They struck a truce with the Queen to last over Yearend. And then some of Red Senlin’s men had been out foraging and been attacked by a marauding party of the enemy. Old Redhand and Red Senlin had issued from the castle to help—and been boxed by the mass of the Queen’s army, who had thus drawn them out.

Red Senlin was among the first killed. Old Redhand had been killed or captured, none knew, none could tell him…

For two days Redhand had stayed in the Harbor in an agony of fear. And then another messenger arrived, a boy gaunt with cold and hunger, the red palm sign on his shoulder.

Old Redhand had been captured in the battle and imprisoned in Forgetful’s belly where the day before he had been guest. Next day in thefirst light the boy watched them take him out into the courtyard, where snow fell; and a bastard son of Farin the Black chopped off his head with a sword.

The boy had fled then. He knew only that Young Harrah would be master at Forgetful, and that the Queen came Inward, behind him, with her army.

“They will be at the margin of the Downs tomorrow,” Redhand said. “Red Senlin’s Son is marching from Senlinsdown to stop her; we must go on, we must march before night…” He tried to rise, but Fauconred restrained him gently.

“Sleep,” he said. “Sleep awhile.”

Redhand slept.

They made a crown for Red Senlin of paper, and put it on his head; put the head on a pole and carried it before them as they streamed Inward across the Drum. Old Redhand they left in the courtyard of Forgetful where Young Harrah, its master now, could bury him or not, as he chose; but Red Senlin went before the Queen’s army.

The immense, dull armor the Queen had had made for herself, wide-winged and endlessly riveted, crossed with chains and bristling with points, would have seemed comical if it hadn’t first seemed so cruel. It took a great laborer of a stallion to bear both it and the Queen; her captain had paid high for it after she had ridden to death the strong black she had fled on. Beneath her visor, above the heavy veil she wore against the cold, her eyes, lampblack-soft and dark, made it seem that somewhere amid the massive flesh and unyielding armor a beautiful woman was held captive. It had been, at times, a useful illusion.

It had been Black Harrah who, ten years before, partly as a useful diplomacy, partly as a tool for his own use, and partly as a joke on the tiny weak-headed King, had brought back from the fastness of the Outlands, the hulking, black-eyed girl, chieftain’s daughter in a thousand brass spangles. Her bride-price, her own vast weight in precious metals, had made her father a rich man indeed.

And now Black Harrah is dead, slain she is sure by the Reds; and she, from ceaseless chase and fight, has miscarried his child in anguish: though none yet knows it. So at sunset near the Little Lake, those dark eyes look out on a thin line of Red horse and foot, Redhand’s, Red Senlin’s Son’s; she thinks of them slain, and her armed feet in their blood.

Her enemies had come together at the crossroads beyond Senlinsdown. There they made a crown for Red Senlin’s Son, a circle of gold riveted to his helmet, and Redhand put it on his head, and their two armies made a cheer muffled in Drumwind and cold; and they mounted again and rode for the Little Lake. At sunset they flew down the Harran road through the still, white Downs, Redhand’s fast horsemen the vanguard, and Red Senlin’s younger son Sennred fierce with grief. Lights were being lit in the last few cottages snowed in amid the folded land; sheep stamped and steamed, and ran huddling quick to their byres as they passed.

They came down between the milestones onto the frozen Drum again as the sun began to move into the smoky Deep ahead; the Queen, expecting them, had drawn up in the crisp snow before the Little Lake, and set her trophy there. When his sons see it, it is a week frozen, the flesh picked at by wind, the jaw fallen away.

They look toward each other there, and the scouts and captains point out which is which. The Queen on her stallion. Kyr, her cold Outland chief. Red Senlin’s Son, tallest of his army. There, by the Dog banner, Sennred small and bent. Redhand—yes, she knows Redhand. Red Senlin’s Son looks for someone, some banner, doesn’t find it. They look a long time. The last sun makes them pieces in a game: the Queen’s a black silhouette army, the King Red Senlin’s Son’s touched with crimson. They turn away.

The game is set. The first moves come at dawn.

How the word moved, that brought to a wind-licked flat above the battle plain so many of the brown sisterhood, the Endwives, none knows but they. But they have come; in the morning they are there, they have walked through the night or driven their two-wheeled carts or long tent-wagons; and they have come in numbers. For as long as any alive remembers, war with the Just has been harry and feint, chase and evade, search and skirmish, and tangle only at the last bitter moment. Now the Endwives look down through the misty dawn at two armies, Protectors and Defenders and all their banners, hundreds to a side, flanked by snowbound cavalry, pushing through the drifts toward each other as though to all embrace.

“Who is that so huge on a cart horse, sister?”

“The Queen. Her enemy’s head is her standard. See how she comes to the front…”

Redhand would not have the Visitor near him. Fauconred, knowing nothing better to do, has sent him to the Endwives to help. He stands with them, watching, listening.

“It’ll snow again soon. It’s darker now than at dawn.”

“The wind blows toward the Queen.”

“Whose is the Dog banner? They fall back from him.”

“Sennred, the new King’s stoop-shouldered brother… Ay, the murder they make.”

Toward noon the snow does begin; the wind is Outward, blowing toward the Queen, who must fall back. The shifting line of their embrace wavers, moves toward the lake, then away, then closer; then the Queen’s ranks part, here, there, and many are forced into the black water. If she had hoped fear of that frozen lake would keep her army from breaking, she was wrong; it looks a cruel gamble to the sisters; but then the wind and snow darken the field, put out the sun, and the Endwives listen, silent, to screams, cries, and the clash of metal so continuous as to be a steady whisper, drowned out when the wind cries or the Drum speaks with horse-sortie.

“Feed the fires, sisters. Keep torches dry. They make a long night for us here.”

“Fall back!” And they do fall back, released from the maelstrom by his harsh croak, echoed by his captains; only Sennred and his wing hesitate, Sennred still eager. But they fall back.

“Regroup!” They force their panting mounts into a semblance of order behind him, the twisting hooves throwing up great clots of muddy snow. His red-palm banner is obscure in the snowy dark; but they see his snow-washed sword. His arm feels like an arm of stone: that numb, that obdurate. “Now on! Strike! Fall on them there!” and the force, in a churning, swirling storm of mud, beat the Drum.

He is outpaced by Sennred, is cut off by a flanking movement of near-spent horse, the stone arm flails with a stone will of its own; he can hear nothing but a great roar and the screaming of his own breath. Then the Black horses part, shattered, and fall away. The tireless snowstorm parts also, and the field grows for a moment ghastly bright, and he sees, amid the broken, fleeing Black cavalry, the Queen, shuffling away on her big horse, slim sword in her great mailed hand.

He shouts forward whoever is around him; the sight of her lashes through him, an icy restorative. Horror and hate, he would smash her like a great bug if he could. He flings from his path with a kind of joy some household people of hers, sees her glance back at him and his men, sees her urge the horse into a massive trot: does not see, in his single purpose, her man Kyr and his Outland spear racing for him. Someone shouts behind him; he wheels, suddenly breathless with the shock of collision; his horse screams under him, for the stone arm with its own eye has seen and struck, throwing the spear’s point into his horse’s breast. She leaps, turns in air spurting blood, catapulting Kyr away by the spear driven in her, falls, is overrun by Kyr’s maddened horse, whose hooves trample her screaming head, trample her master, Redhand. He is kicked free, falls face down. His flung sword, plunged in mud, waves, trembles, is still. Redhand is still.

Blood frozen quickly stays as bright as when shed.

The Endwives, intent as carrion birds, move among the fallen, choosing work, turning over the dead to find the living caught beneath.

The Visitor’s manufacture keeps him from weariness, but not from horror. He hears its cries in his ears, he stumbles over it half buried in bloody snow. His eyes grow wide with it.

His difficulty is in telling the living from the dead. Some still moving he sees the sisters examine and leave; others who are unmoving they minister to. This one: face down, arm twisted grotesquely… the Visitor turns him gently with more than man’s strength, holds his torch near to see. “You’re dead.” A guess. The eyes look up at him unseeing. “Are you dead?” He wipes pink snow from the face: it is the man Redhand, who begins to breathe stertorously, and blows a blood-bubble from his gray lips. The Visitor considers this sufficient and lifts him easily in his arms, turning this way and that to decide what next. Redhand’s breath grows less labored; he clings to the Visitor almost like a child in nurse’s arms, his numb fingers clutching, the brown cloak. Fauconred’s tent: he sees its Cup banner far off as someone passes it with a torch. Even when it disappears into darkness again, he moves unerringly toward it, through that trampled, screaming field: and each separate cry is separately engraved on a deathless, forgetless memory.

Fauconred starts to see him. His day has been full of terrible things, but somehow, now, the Visitor’s face seems most terrible: what had seemed changeless and blank has altered, the eyes are wide and deep-shadowed, the mouth thin and down-drawn.

“It’s he, Redhand.” The smooth, cool voice has not changed. “Help me. Tell me if he’s dead. Tell me… He mustn’t be dead. He mustn’t be. He must live.”