Chapter 24
Maeneb gazed around, trying to penetrate the shadowy knots of undergrowth beneath the trees. The path that the firedrake had taken through the Darkburn forest was easy to distinguish: a track had obviously been cleared earlier by the stonemen, and the point at which the firedrake had plunged across it was marked by scorched tree-trunks and ripped branches. Had it been the height of a dry summer, half the forest could have been on fire by now. Luckily it was the end of a wet winter, so that only the new, tender buds were burnt.
There was neither sight nor sound of the firedrake or the stonemen. When Thoronal asked her, “How close now?” she tested for them again in her mind.
“Two miles away at least.”
He nodded soberly. Even though each of the Riders in the forest held a protective stone – prised quickly and unceremoniously from various corpses – nobody showed any inclination to go deeper into the trees in pursuit of the enemy.
“All right,” said Thoronal. “That’ll do. Let’s get back to the others.”
Maeneb thought that he ought not to have come down here in the first place, not when at least six of his troop were dead and two dozen badly burnt or wounded. He should have stayed back up on the hill with them. Although she could sense his shame and confusion, she felt little sympathy. He’d been too ready to assume the stonemen were retreating – and he should have led his own retreat as soon as the firedrake appeared. It was only because she had held back that she hadn’t ended up burnt herself.
She knew that retreat was not in Thoronal’s nature. He hated to be worsted in any conflict, verbal or actual. She also knew that he had burns all down one arm and was trying to ignore them. Pain was easy to detect.
And when they trekked back out of the forest to the others, there was too much pain there, waiting. As well as the six Riders of Thoronal’s troop, Sashel had lost three and Orbrel two. About forty were severely hurt, enough to put them out of action. Many of the remainder had minor burns or wounds.
The lesser wounded were now tending the more badly hurt close to the battlefield. On the field itself, Theol and a dozen others worked grimly at prising stones from the skulls of the dead enemy. Maeneb tried to estimate the number of the dead: more than a hundred, maybe two. She felt no triumph.
Walking over to where Rothir sat on the ground, being tended by Parthenal, she squatted down a yard or two away to talk. She was fully aware that Rothir had saved the Riders by his actions, while Thoronal’s rash charge had almost caused disaster.
“The enemy are at least two miles away,” she said. “And still withdrawing. There’s no advantage in trying to pursue them any further through the forest. But there’s no knowing how quickly they’ll regain control of the firedrake.”
Rothir nodded. “We need to move before that happens.”
“Hold still,” said Parthenal, who was tying up a gash in Rothir’s thigh with a curved needle and thread. Rothir held still and winced while the wound was packed with star-moss, and a rough bandage applied.
“You should have worn the leg guards,” Parthenal told him curtly.
“They slow me down. It’s not too bad.” Although Rothir’s legs were red, the burns were superficial – unlike those of poor Calenir, who lay and moaned nearby as two Riders tried to alleviate his pain. His part in this campaign was over.
Thoronal walked up and stood over the group. He’s spent the last half hour working himself up to this, thought Maeneb, as she waited silently for him to speak.
“I got that wrong,” he said after a moment. “Well fought, Rothir.”
“We were lucky it worked,” said Rothir. “No guarantees. How many stones are we likely to get?”
“Theol estimates at least four hundred. No guarantees of them either, of course; we can’t be sure that all the stones will have the same effect. But a good haul.” He looked at Parthenal. “Well fought also, Parthenal.” Maeneb could tell that it cost him an effort to say that too.
“All the Riders fought well,” said Parthenal coolly, securing the bandage around Rothir’s leg. He himself was practically unscathed despite having been in the thick of battle. Untouched in his emotions, she thought, as well as in his body. In all her dozen years’ experience of warfare, Maeneb had come across no fighter so ruthlessly efficient as Parthenal – except, perhaps, Veron.
“Did you see we had observers?” Parthenal went on, pointing over to a rise where two horses stood. Even at a distance the riders’ gear glinted profusely in the sun.
“Oh,” said Thoronal heavily. “Kelvha, I presume. No, I hadn’t noticed them.”
“Nice of them to come and help,” said Parthenal.
“I suppose I’d better go and talk to them,” said Thoronal. “Not that it’ll make any difference to the report that they’ll send back.”
“It should be a good enough report,” said Maeneb.
“In parts, maybe.” Thoronal trudged off towards the pair of horsemen. He had not gone very far when they wheeled their horses round and rode away.
“Friendly,” commented Parthenal.
“They’ll have their orders. You know that,” said Rothir. He rubbed at his head and a handful of burnt hair came off in his fingers. His leather helmet sat beside him on the grass, its crown burnt through.
“Don’t worry, it suits you having half a head of hair,” Parthenal assured him. “Next time, just hold your stonemen to the left, and it’ll even up.”
Maeneb wished she knew how to make a joke. Rothir looked as if he needed cheering. She tried to think of something positive to say.
“At least we’ll get one good night’s sleep in Thield before we have to set off north,” she offered. And at that he laughed.
“Yes, that’ll be a luxury, won’t it? That’ll do, Parthenal, thanks. You don’t need to help me up.”
But Parthenal shook his head as he pulled Rothir to his feet. “I do. You’re creaking like an old man, dwarf. Your home-made sword proved its worth today, though, didn’t it?”
“It did the job,” said Rothir, immediately serious again. He laid his hand on the sword’s blood-stained hilt as if on the supporting arm of a friend.
“Remember that I’ve ordered one just like it from you.”
“When I get the chance,” said Rothir. “That could be a while.”
Maeneb left them and went to check on the wounded members of her own troop. Durba was one of those acting as nurse, applying star-moss to Felba’s head. She looked up as Maeneb arrived. Still that happiness… it was disturbing, especially after such a battle. Maeneb could not understand it.
Or rather, she didn’t want to understand it. What did it mean if Durba was becoming attached to her? What did Durba expect? She herself wanted no relationship with anybody, physical or emotional, male or female. She quite liked Durba for her reticence but that was as far as it went.
“It was a good win in the end,” said Durba eagerly, “wasn’t it? At least we killed several darkburns and half the stonemen. And we put the others to flight.”
“The firedrake put the stonemen to flight. And we killed less than half. And one of the darkburns is still roaming around somewhere.”
“But we’ll be all right now we’ve got the stones.” Durba seemed quite confident.
“They weren’t a good defence against the firedrake,” Maeneb pointed out. “The reach of its flames was too long.”
“Well, if we can collect enough stones we can just throw them, and repel a firedrake that way. In any case, I don’t think they’ll be able to take a firedrake all the way up north, will they? I imagine it’s too big for a cart, and much harder to control than the usual darkburns. The stonemen could easily get roasted.”
“True,” admitted Maeneb sombrely. “They would certainly be hard to drive.”
“How many firedrakes do you think there are? Bruilde said that she’d seen two.”
“So at least two, then.”
“I never thought a firedrake would look like that,” said Durba. She was irritatingly talkative and enthusiastic, quite unlike the taciturn companion of the journey to the Gyr. “I thought they would be scaly with huge wings.”
“They should be, by all accounts.” Maeneb thought about the firedrake. The horror and dread of it had almost paralysed her at first; but at the same time, in the middle of that horror, she had reached out with her mind towards it, searching.
And, as with the darkburns, she had found almost nothing there. Or rather, what was there was on a different level to her own mind; as if it was a sound too low for her to hear, or a colour that she could not see…
How could she teach herself to see that colour, to hear that sound – to feel the darkburns? It would be so useful. But she had no idea where to start. She knew it was a failure and it depressed her.
“You’ll do now, Felba,” said Durba, patting her patient on the shoulder before she looked up again at Maeneb. “Your turn now. Your face looks burnt.”
“It’s not bad.” She moved away, but Durba stood up and followed her.
“It may not be bad, but it looks sore. Let me tend it, Maeneb.”
“Leave it,” she said sharply. “You know that I don’t like to be touched. By anybody.”
“Maybe that could change,” said Durba.
“Maybe it couldn’t.”
“Well, all right, but if you’re wounded–”
“I’m not wounded.”
“A bit of star-moss would just soothe–”
“Stop it, Durba. Why are you talking so much?”
“Am I?”
“The battle excited you.”
“I suppose so. Yes, I think it did. You see, it’s the first time I ever–”
“And you didn’t mind it? Killing people? Seeing people dying?”
“Well, of course I mind it,” Durba said, “but they’re stonemen, after all, and I didn’t really know the Riders who died. I mean, I’m sorry for them, obviously.”
Maeneb looked at her long and hard. “You’re very young.”
“I’m twenty. Not all that young. So am I supposed to fall apart on the battlefield? That wouldn’t be very useful, would it? I thought I coped quite well with the darkburn feelings. I knew that they weren’t real.”
“But the deaths are real. You ought to care about the people you are fighting alongside.”
“I do,” said Durba. “Of course I do. But all the ones I care about are fine. And it is exciting, isn’t it?”
“It’s not a game,” said Maeneb.
“But it is an adventure.”
Maeneb sighed. Time would probably teach Durba, so why should she try to disillusion her? All the same, battle ought to mean more to her than this. Even Parthenal, she knew, had never taken killing lightly. Both his skill and ruthlessness had developed over many years.
And here was Durba, to whom this first horrific fight was nothing but a big adventure. For all Maeneb’s insight into the inner lives of other people, this was something that she couldn’t understand.