The Hero And The Crown

 

SHE RODE IN A DAZE of misery, unconscious of the yerig and folstza who pressed closely around Talat's legs and looked anxiously up into her face; and she stopped, numbly, at nightfall. She might have gone on till she dropped in her tracks, were she on foot; but she was not, and so at nightfall she stopped, and stripped her horse, and rubbed him down with a dry cloth. Talat was a little sore; that sudden gallop to begin a long day had done his weak leg no good, and so she unwrapped some ointment that would warm the stiffness, and massaged it in vigorously, and even smiled a little at the usual grimaces of pleasure Talat made.

When she lay down by the fire she sprang up again almost at once, and paced back and forth. She was dizzy with exhaustion and stupid with unhappiness, and she was riding to the gods knew what at the City; and as she remembered that, she remembered also flashes of what she had seen, deep in the Lake of Dreams. But that brought her back to Luthe again, and the tears ran down her face, and, standing before the campfire, she bowed her face in her hands and sobbed.

This would not do. She had the Crown, and she carried an enchanted sword; she was coming home a warrior victorious - and a first sol worthy of respect. She felt like dead leaves, dry and brown and brittle, although leaves were probably not miserable; they were just quietly buried by snow and burned by sun and harried by rain till they peacefully disintegrated into the earth .... She found herself staring at the earth under her feet. She had to get some sleep.

She turned despairingly back to her blanket and found two furry bodies already there. The dog queen smiled at her and moved her feathery tail an inch at least; the cat king flattened his ears and half-lidded his eyes. Neither paid the least attention to the other.

She laughed, a cracked laugh, half a choke. "Thank you," she said. "Perhaps I shall sleep after all," She pillowed her head on a cat flank, and a dog head lay in the curve between her ribs and pelvis, and a dog tail curled over her feet. She slept at once, and heavily; and she woke in the morning hugging the queen's neck with her face buried in her ruff, and the big yerig had a look of great patience and forbearance on her face that no doubt she wore when bearing with a new litter of puppies.

Aerin also woke with a sense of urgency; urgency so great that it broke through the numbness. "Soon," she said aloud to Talat, and he cocked his ear at her and grunted only a little at the indignity of having his girth tightened. "They need us soon."

He was stiff this morning as well, but Aerin paid attention and was careful, and he worked out of it. Before the darkness came upon them a second time they had nearly passed the Airdthmar on their right hand; and by the third evening Aerin could see the fault in the top line of the Hills that was the pass to the forested plain before the City, for her way home was short when she knew where she was going. Tomorrow, perhaps, they would stand in that pass.

Her friends slept with her again that night, but they had a less peaceful time of it, for her dreams were bad, full of battle and shouting, and the groans of the wounded, and the fell ghastly sound of the language of the folk of the North. She woke often and sweating, her fist clenched and her nerves jumping. In the last dream she had before dawn she heard Arlbeth's voice, weary and hopeless: "If only we had the Crown. We might yet ... "

"If we had had the Crown," another voice, higher pitched: Perlith. "If we had had the Crown, we would not be so badly off in the first place."

"At least," said Galanna in a voice so low that Arlbeth would not hear her, "we do not have our little bad-luck token with us. Thank the gods for that much."

Thank the gods ... thank the gods she's not here ... not here ... the Crown, please the gods, we need the Crown, it is not here ....

She woke up. Dawn was just creeping above the mountains' crests. She did not want to be awake yet, for today she would come in sight of her City, and she was afraid of what she would find; afraid that she came too late; afraid that even the Crown was not enough. Afraid that they would not accept the Crown from her hands. Afraid that they would read in her face whom she had wrested the Crown from.

Afraid that they would read in her face that she knew, now, that she did not belong to Damar. She would love it all her life, and that life was likely to be a long one; and she had a duty to it that she might fulfill some part of, if she tried as hard as she could.

She told herself that she did not think of Luthe.

Her army flowed up on her either flank; a sea of furry backs, black and grey and brindled, golden and ruddy; there was no playfulness in them today. Their ears pointed in the direction they were going, and their tails were low. She had unwrapped the Crown, and at first she carried it before her balanced on the pommel, and then she thought of stowing it away again, but she wanted it close, where she could touch it and it touch her. She slung it at last up over her arm to her shoulder, and it warmed, riding there, till when she reached to touch it with her fingers it was the same temperature as her own skin.

As they rode into the morning the wind sang in her ears, but it carried strange sounds within it, and she smelled strange odors. It was Talat's restlessness, at last, that told her what was happening; for these were the sounds and smells of battle.

They wound their way up the smooth broad track that led between Vasth and Kar to the low forested hills before the City. As they reached the top of the pass Talat snorted and shied away, and Aerin clung to the saddle, not believing the glimpse she had had of the scene below them. Grimly she kneed Talat around, and reluctantly he obeyed her, but still he tried to sidle sideways, to turn and bolt. Even Maur had not been so bad as what lay before them.

The trees were gone; even, it seemed, the gentle hills were flattened, and where there had been the greens and browns and deep blue shadows of leaves and trees there was the grisly heave and thrust of battle. The Northerners were there, between her and her City. She could see small human bands, the largest near the City gates, fighting desperately; but they were outnumbered, and they fought defensively, because their honor demanded it, and because fear of being captured alive by the Northerners drove them on; not because they had any hope left. And the Northerners knew this.

Aerin stared numbly at the ragged scarred landscape, and listened to the terrible cries and the heavy sound of blows, and the fumes of the fighting choked her, and made her eyes water. It was as though the forest she had daily seen from the highest towers of her father's castle had never been; it was as if, when Luthe dragged her back to her own time, he had miscalculated and she was some other Aerin on some other world. She waited for panic to take her. Talat quieted and stood, ears forward, tense, but awaiting her orders; and her army surrounded her, and made a huge pool behind her that splashed like surf up the rock sides of the pass.

"Well," she said aloud, and the calmness of her own voice frightened her. "Maybe not being quite mortal any more is going to count for less than I thought." She settled the Crown more firmly on her shoulder, and drew Gonturan, who gleamed blue along her edge; the blue rippled up, over the hilt and grip, and flowed over Aerin's hand. There was an odd subtle tingle at the touch of the blue shimmer, but it was not unpleasant; Aerin put it down to the twitching of her own nerves.

"I hope, my friends, that you will help me now: escort me - there," she said, and pointed with her sword; and from Gonturan's tip a blue spark jumped, and fell sizzling to the ground, and the cat king paced gravely over to examine the spot where it had fallen.

Then Aerin thought that perhaps it wasn't her nerves after all.

She shook the sword, and the blue light brightened till it lit the air around her, and the pit below her shimmered with it, and the cat king's eyes glinted with it as he looked up at her; and the light made it easier, somehow, to see, for just beyond where Gonturan's tip pointed she saw Kethtaz quite clearly, and Arlbeth on his back; and the blue light seemed to settle around him too, across the eerie ground so far away. It outlined Tor as well, not far from his king; and she wondered where the standard-bearer was, for it was this lack that had made her unsure that she had seen her father aright; but she had no time to think about it now.

"Listen," she said, and many pairs of bright eyes turned to her. "The Crown must fall only into the hands of Arlbeth or Tor. No one else. I will give it to one of them if I can" - she swallowed - "and if I fail, then you must; or if neither should leave this battle alive, then you must carry it far from here - far from here, far from Damar; as far as your feet can bear you." Her voice echoed oddly, as if the blue light reflected it or focused it, or held it together; and she had no doubt, suddenly, of her army, and a great sense of relief came to her, and almost a sort of joy.

"Come on, then," she said. "I'd really best prefer to deliver it myself."

She raised Gonturan, and Talat leaped forward, and the yerig and folstza fanned out around her; and the first Northerner to feel the teeth of Aerin's army fell beneath the dog queen, and the second was beheaded by Gonturan, and the third was pulled down by the tall black cat.

The Northerners had no scouts looking back over the mountains, for they had no reason to think a watch was necessary; they had the best strength of Damar bottled up in the City before them, and what few folk there were stilt scattered in small towns and mountain villages had been sufficiently terrorized by marauding bands of Northerners that they could be relied on to stay shivering at home. Furthermore, the Northern leaders could hear their enemies from afar, and could tell from whence they came, just as Perlith could turn a handful of nothing into a bouquet of flowers at a court ball.

Or so they had been able to do. They had had no foreknowledge of Aerin's approach, and the Northerners, while no cowards, knew much of magic and perhaps more of kelar than the Damarians did; and the unexpectedness of this feat frightened them far more than the simple fact of Aerin's presence. And so they did not rally at once, as they should have, for, had they done so, they might have cut her down and won the day for themselves, and won Damar forever. But they did not. They wheeled their riding beasts, some of them nearly horses but most of them nothing like horses at all, and tried more to get out of her way than to engage her and test her strength.

The common soldiery of the North was more frightened yet. They saw that their leaders did not like this blue flame that dazzled their eyes and, if it came too near, parted their queerly jointed limbs from their thick bodies; and so they scrambled to be free of the thing, whatever it was; and the blue light only rippled farther and farther out from its center, and spread all around them. Frequently it felt like teeth at their throats, and their brown-and-purple blood soon tinged the ethereal blue a darker shade; and sometimes it fell from above them, like the lashing hoofs of a war-horse; and their own dying cries were in their ears, and a high singing note as well that they had never heard before, although in it were also the sharp snarls of the wild mountain cats, and the dangerous baying of a yerig pack, and the shrill screams of a fighting stallion.

The blue dazzled Aerin's eyes too, but it was a useful sort of dazzlement because it seemed to break the Northerners' clumsy movements into arcs whose sweep she could judge so precisely that as they tried to escape her she knew just where to let Gonturan fall across them. She did not think of how many she killed or maimed; she thought of them only as obstacles that must be overcome that she might rejoin her own people. Merely to let them part before Talat's trampling hoofs, as they showed a great willingness to do, was not enough, for they might then close in again behind her; and so Gonturan fell, and rose and fell again, and Aerin's blue-brightened eyes watched and followed, and looked ahead to where the Damarians were making their last stand. She had one landmark to guide her, one of the tall standing stones that marked the last uphill stretch of the king's way into the City; the one of the four stones that did still stand. But she could no longer see Tor or Arlbeth. Nor did she often dare raise her eyes to look; for there were those who stood to oppose her, who as they tried to step out of her way still showed the glint of metal, to disembowel Talat if they could, or hurl a poisoned throwing knife at her from behind; she could not spare her vigilance. Her army kept pace with her; a swathe they were cutting through the Northerners; occasionally she saw, from the corners of her eyes, a cat body, or a lean dog shape, fling itself on the twisted helm or misshapen body of a Northerner; but then at once she had to aim Gonturan for another blow. There was a high-pitched hum in her ears, though she could still hear the hoarse shouts of the Northerners, and the harsh ugly sound of the words of their language in those shouts.

And across the battlefield, near the City, the beleaguered Damarians looked up to see what was suddenly causing such consternation in the ranks of their enemies. Looked up: and strained their eyes, for what they saw was a blue sea rushing toward them, a white crest at its peak where it reared to break. But the blue surface rippled more like furry backs than like water, and the rearing white crest was a war-horse, and a sword blazed blue in his rider's hand; he carried no shield and wore no armor, but he seemed not to need it, for the Northerners fled before him, and only his sword's quickness stayed their flight, and slew them as they sought to escape.

The white horse neighed with war fury, and the yerig bayed, and the folstza cried their harsh hunting cries, and nearer and nearer the rushing blue army came; and the Damarians, some of them, found themselves fearing this unlooked-for succor, and wondered what the white rider planned for them when he had cut his way so far; for there was no doubt that he drew near them, as if their City's gates were his destination; nor was there any doubt that he would succeed in arriving there.

But there was a muffled exclamation from Tor. "To me! Quickly!" He urged his tired Dgeth forward, and his excitement gave her new strength. "Follow me! It's Aerin!"

Only a few followed him; but whether this was for weariness or deafness, or fear of the blue thing, or fear that the blue thing was or was not Aerin-sol, it was impossible to say; but one of those who followed close on Dgeth's heels was the messenger who had once brought news of Maur's terrible waking to the king.

Aerin knew her arm was tired, but it did not seem to matter; Gonturan found the necks and vitals of the Northerners with her own keen edge and merely drew Aerin's arm with her. Then Aerin heard her name called, and she shook her head, for she was imagining things; but she heard it again. It occurred to her that it sounded like Tor's voice, and that perhaps she was not imagining things, and she looked up, and there was Tor indeed. Heavy ranks of Northerners separated them yet, and even as their eyes met, a riding beast, mottled yellow and with forked hoofs and the ears of a cat, reared up between them, and Aerin saw the one-eyed queen hanging from its throat, and two of her followers leaping for purchase at its flanks. Hamstrung, it fell kicking, and the queen pulled the rider down, and Aerin watched no further; and then Talat kicked and leaped sideways, and there was work for Gonturan again; and for a moment she lost Tor.

She called his name, this time, and at last she heard him answer; he was to one side of her now, but when she turned Talat that way the battle seemed only to drag him farther away. Then the Crown, which had clung to her shoulder all this time as if by its own volition, shook loose and ran down her arm, and struck Gonturan's hilt with a clang.

"Tor!" she cried again; and as his face turned to her, she tossed the Crown over the hilt, to the tip of the sword, swept the blade upright, and - flung the Hero's Crown across the evil sea that churned between them.

Gonturan blazed up like a falling star as the Crown ran her length, and as it wheeled into the air it in its turn burst into flame, red as the sun at noon, red as a mage's hair; and Tor, dumbly, raised his own sword as if in salute, and the Crown caught its edge, swung, hissing, round the tip, and fell to circle his wrist. Any Northerner might have killed him then, for he dropped his shield, and his sword arm was stretched out immobile as he stared at the glowing red thing hanging from his arm. But the Northerners were afraid of it too; they had seen enough of strange Lights, and the blue one they already knew to be fatal. And the white rider had thrown this thing from the wicked Blue Sword.

Aerin shrieked: "It's the Crown, can't you see? PUT IT ON!"

Tor looked up again; Aerin was quite near now, and then she was beside him, banging her calf painfully against his stirrup as Talat pranced and pretended to be taller. She yanked his arm down, pried his fingers loose from his sword hilt, shook the Crown free; pulled his head down toward her and jammed the Crown over his temples.