Maze of Moonlight, Gael Baudino [ebook reader screen TXT] 📗

“But . . . the smoke. Even Elves have limits, Terrill.”

“I believe that the Inquisition has proven that, my good lord.” Terrill's gray eyes lost none of their dispassionate calm, but he shrugged as though willing a painful thought to pass. “I will just have to lead you more quickly.”

And so, it seemed, he did, for he redoubled his efforts, and Paul began to suspect that the Elf was giving aid of a non-physical sort to those who were weakening under the strain of what had become a forced march through a poisonous atmosphere. Beneath his hands, those who were nearly strangling with the smoke rose to walk again, and even Prunella, whose eight-and-a-half-month belly appeared bent on putting her on the ground, managed a wan smile and staggered on.

All through the day and into the night they struggled, measuring out their rests by minutes, their meals by mouthfuls. But the smoke continued to thicken. Paul guessed that the fire was raging hellishly by now, eating its way through a dry forest, urged on by the continuing east wind. And that, too, he was sure, was a strain on Terrill, for the forest was as much of a home as the Elves had ever known. With what emotions did the Elf confront this final insult to his fading kind? Paul, fresh from having lost his castle, could only guess. He had lived in Shrinerock for forty years, but the Elves had been one with Malvern since the time of the first saplings.

The path shimmered in his sight as much from the pervasive toxins in the air as from the magic that sustained it. Paul stumbled, stumbled again. He wanted to breathe, he had to breathe, but he could find nothing to fill his lungs save smoke, and his heart was empty.

He struck the ground, lay still. “I've failed,” he murmured. “I tried, dear Lady, but it wasn't enough.”

Birds called wildly from the branches far above, exploding into frantic and blind flight as the thickening smoke overpowered their nocturnal reluctance. In the distance, Paul heard the frantic rushings and collisions and bellows and cries of panicked animals as they fled towards the west, warned by the smoke and their instincts that their home was lost.

Lost. Paul was lost, his people were lost, the Elves were lost. Everything was . . .

He looked up to find Martin standing over him. The lad had stripped off his tunic and hat, and had been laboring barechested alongside Terrill and the men of the estate, coaxing, ordering, cajoling, dragging the people towards the dwindling hope of safety. Lithe and strong, Martin was dripping with sweat, his face was gray, and his arms and chest were smeared with dirt and dust, but he knelt beside Paul, took his arm. “Come, my lord. You can't lie here.”

Paul rested his forehead on the ground, his eyes clenched. “I should lie here and die.” Where were his smiles now? His little daft witticisms? His boyish boundings along the halls of Shrinerock? Those, it seemed, belonged to another life, another century, another age. Much better that old doddering men like Paul delMari should just die—along with their friends and their sons—and get it over with.

Martin was not satisfied. He pulled Paul's arm about his neck and stood up, dragging the baron to his feet. “Would you have let me say something like that when you were teaching me how to use a sword?”

Paul turned hollow eyes on him. “What good is it, Martin? You just wanted to hide. You wouldn't even let me knight you, and now you're going to die in the middle of Malvern along with the rest of us.”

“Don't talk like that, my lord.”

Paul hung his head. It had all come to naught.

Gently, with his free hand, Martin touched Paul's cheek. When the baron looked up, the lad was crying. “Don't talk like that . . .” He sobbed. “. . . Father.”

Paul shut his eyes, rested his head against Martin's.

Martin dragged him forward. “Come on, Father,” he said, stumbling over the words. “We have to get to Aurverelle.”

The clouds of smoke were almost opaque now, a sustained chorus of coughing was coming from his people, and Aurverelle was still miles away. It seemed hopeless.

But Paul gripped Martin's hand. “We'll make it, my son.”

***

The loss of the siege guns and of well over a hundred men only delayed Berard's plans. Throughout the remainder of the day, the men of the companies buried their dead, tended their wounded, and established camp, but with the next morning came a shout from Berard and a rushing of armed men at the village of Saint Brigid.

The villagers were ready. The palisade took the brunt of the charge and forced the attackers to either climb over it or break it down in the face of a pelting hail of slingstones, arrows, and sacks of dung. But even if they succeeded in penetrating it, there was no longer a bridge over the deep ditch that lay between them and the village walls, and weighted with armor and weapons as they were, they were forced to stumble down one side and clamber laboriously up the other, now and again catching an ankle or a leg in the pits and traps that pocked the bottom. And while they struggled across, there were, to be sure, more rocks, more arrows . . . and more dung.

It was Christopher who had proposed this last, odoriferous defense, for he knew from personal experience that armor weighing anywhere from one hundred to two hundred pounds was very nearly intolerable to wear even under the best conditions. Given the stifling heat and dust, Berard's men were doubtless anything but happy, and Christopher was eager to add to their misery.

He himself flung a sackful that, trailing a spray of droplets, arced through the air and smacked solidly into Berard's visor. A moment of stunned shock on Berard's part, and then the captain fumbled frantically for the