He struggled to his feet and turned again into the gale. Despite everything, despite his own desire, he would reach the monastery. He would not shame his father and aunt. The wind tore at his hair, stinging his eyes. His lips, wet half with salt spray and half with cold rain, parched in the harsh current of air that whirlpooled around him.
The fog lightened. An eerie light glowed down the straight road that led along the dragon’s back height. An unearthly presence, it grew closer, and broader, dispelling the fog as it went… but only around itself. He saw with a strange kind of distant tunneling sight that the storm closed back around once the light passed. He smelled spring blossoms and the fresh blood of slaughter.
A rider approached. Armed in bright mail, it guided its horse forward at a sedate walk, untroubled by the raging wind. Alain thought about running, but it was so brief a thought that it was ripped away on the air almost as quickly as it formed. Because he had to stare.
The horse was beautiful, as white as untouched snow, almost blinding, and the woman—
He could not have moved even if he had tried. She reined her warhorse in beside him. She was a woman of middle age, scarred on the face and hands, her boots muddied and scuffed, her coat of mail patched here and there with gleaming new rings of iron. Her long sword, sheathed in leather, swayed in front of him. A battered, round shield hung by her knee, tied to the saddle. She shifted in the saddle to examine him. They stood in dead calm. Three strides beyond the storm raged around them.
Her gaze was at once distant and utterly piercing. If her eyes had color, he could not make it out. They seemed as black as a curse to him. He stared up at her, and a cold fear gripped his heart.
“What must I pay you, to ride to war?” she asked. Her lips moved with the words, but her voice, low and deep as the church bell, rang in his head with echoes scattering off it.
Not knowing what else to do, he knelt. He did not let his gaze falter from hers; to blink might well prove fatal. “Lady.” His voice was as hoarse as hers was resonant. He tried again. “I am sworn to the church.”
“Not in your heart,” she said. She drew her sword. Whatever he expected, no light flamed off the blade; it did not gleam or spark. It was dull metal, hard, good metal, made for killing. She swung it over his head in a high arc and pointed back the way she had come.
The air seemed sucked away from the height on which they stood. As down a long tunnel, seen with the sight of eagles, he saw the monastery, though he could not possibly see it from here. The orderly pattern of buildings, the retaining wall: Seen from so high, he thought for an instant he could discern a second pattern underlying the monastery buildings, something ancient and troubling.
But his view tumbled, down and down and down, until he saw two boats drawn up on the strand and the creatures pouring forth from them. They could not be called men, with their strange, sharp faces and inhuman coloring. Naked to the waist, their torsos and faces were patterned with white scars and garish painted colors. They carried axes and spears and bows with stone-tipped arrows, and their skin bore a scaly, metallic sheen. Some had claws bursting from their knuckles, a horrible, white growth. Dogs ran with them, packs of huge, ugly dogs that had less mercy than their masters.
They burned as they went, setting fire to the thatched roofs of the outlying buildings. They slaughtered the monks without mercy. Somehow he could see inside the chapel. He could see Brother Gilles, where he knelt praying at the altar, silver-haired and frail, clutching his beloved gold-leafed Book of Unities, the treasure of the monastery. A white-haired barbarian stuck the old man through from behind and wrenched the precious book from his dying grasp, then ripped the gold, jewel-encrusted cover off the binding, tossing the parchment leaves like so much offal onto Brother Gilles’ bloody corpse.
“You are not yet sworn by your own oath,” said the woman. With a wrench Alain stood again on the ridge, hemmed in by storm.
“I must go!” he cried. He started up, impelled forward by some wild notion of saving Brother Gilles.
She stopped him with the flat of her sword. “It is too late for them. But see.”
And pointed with her sword toward the village.
A haze of lights. Red streamers flapped damply against eaves. Most of the houses were well shut, except for Aunt Bel’s. She stood huddled in the doorway, staring forlornly, with bitter concern, up the road in the direction he had gone. Behind her, Stancy played chess at the table with her youngest sister, little Agnes; she moved, white Dragon takes red Castle. The other children cast circle-sticks by the hearth, and the baby slept in its cradle. The fire blazed and cracked, hot, smoking.
Alain’s eyes watered from it, such heat, and then he was yanked outside into the sharp cold and the stinging wind. On the strand below the village, a long, narrow boat beached. Ai, Lord and Lady! There were more of them! They flooded out of the boat, clawed, painted, readying their weapons.
Fog boiled past his eyes. He swatted it away. Tears streaked his face. “It’s too late.” He turned to her where she sat as serene as death on her white horse. “Why are you showing me this?”
She smiled. She had a terrible beauty, seared by hardship and agony and the wild madness of battle. “Serve me,” she said. “Serve me, Alain Henrisson, and I will spare the village.”
“How can you?” he gasped, remembering Brother Gilles impaled, the monastery in flames, seeing the wild, savage creatures who charged up the strand toward the houses of his kin and neighbors.
“Serve me,” she said.
Alain collapsed to his knees. Was that the baby’s scream on the wind? “I swear it.”
“Stand.”
He stood. The cold steel of her sword came to rest on his right shoulder, then his left, then, last, achingly cold, so that it seemed to suck all heat from him and yet burn him at the same time, she rested the flat of the blade on his head.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
The sword, like pain by death, was lifted. Her reply rang out and yet was muted by the howl of the wind. “I am the Lady of Battles. Keep this, my token.”
And she was gone. A blinding light pierced his eyes, and pain stabbed through his heart. The dark clouds blew up and enveloped him. Far away, he heard a hoarse, gleeful battle cry, and then he fainted.
o;What must I pay you, to ride to war?” she asked. Her lips moved with the words, but her voice, low and deep as the church bell, rang in his head with echoes scattering off it.
Not knowing what else to do, he knelt. He did not let his gaze falter from hers; to blink might well prove fatal. “Lady.” His voice was as hoarse as hers was resonant. He tried again. “I am sworn to the church.”