play of wishes and dreams over an exquisite but finally
quite ordinary weapon. And believing this I refused the
instructions of elf and female in the use of the lances.
Instead of instructions, I listened to the laughter of
gamblers and the songs, songs which, if not invented in
secret by Breca, were invented in secret by one much like
him:
OH WHERE THE NORTH WALL IS CRUMBLING,
LET US PUT MORTAR AND BRICK,
LET US STACK LIMESTONE ON LIMESTONE
LAID DOWN WITH A PROMISE AND LICK,
AND WHEREVER LIMESTONE WILL FAIL US
AND MORTAR AND BRICK GIVE WAY,
LET US STACK FOOTMAN ON FOOTMAN
LAID DOWN WITH THE PROMISE OF PAY.
And listened to the politics from on high, to the
speculations of Heros and the grumbling of the foot
soldiers. For something was clearly afoot, and Heros
described it as a bitter dance of moons, Derek’s on the wane
and Sturm’s waxing, power flowing like light away from
one man into another.
Heros championed neither of the factions: both were, as
he would say, TOO VARIABLE. There was Sturm on the
rise, once dishonored, once the companion of dwarves and
kender and elves and the vagabond mage with the hourglass
eyes whom nobody had trusted or quite mistrusted, and
could the road back to honor lie in the company of such a
patchwork crew? Heros did not have the answer, and
without certain answers it was his nature to disapprove.
Derek, on the other hand, had ceased to be an option,
his armor too bright from polishing too much and too long,
his eyes too bright from something far more unsettling than
wine or the fever of approaching battle. He had taken to
winding a horn in imitation of Huma, and at all hours of the
night the footmen were called on alert, equipped and
assembled to find only that the alarm had been raised by
Lord Derek himself, alarmed by what he considered the
unnatural closeness – or sometimes distance – of the red
moon and the silver. And the men did not complain loudly,
nor comment too loudly when Lord Derek wore the horns
of a stag on his helmet, as if in recalling the old divine
contest between the hero and the quarry, he had chosen to
play both the hunter and the hunted.
It was one night, not long before his riding forth,
pursuing a disaster of which you have no doubt heard, that I
was awakened once again by the sound of the horn
winding. I armed myself, thinking continually, PERHAPS
THIS TIME, PERHAPS HE WILL NOT CRY WOLF
FOREVER, and moved through a courtyard as silent as if
nothing had happened, the footmen crouched around the
fires sleeping or drinking or dicing, or drinking and dicing
themselves to sleep, all as if the night were soundless and as
safe as any other. And of all these, only Breca watched the
battlements where, outlined in red and silver, a glittering
figure all metal and antler sounded a lonely horn.
I stood beside Breca, who never took his eyes from the
solitary figure as he leaned on the pommel of his two-
handed sword, chuckling a dry laugh as desolate as the
winter outside the fortress and, glancing sideways at me,
murmuring, THAT ONE HAS A THOUSAND DEATHS ON
HIM. HE HAS BEEN DISMOUNTED BY THE WINTER
AND THE ICE AND THE WAITING AND THERE IS NOT
A THING IN THE MEASURE TO COVER THIS, SO THEY
WILL DO NOTHING.
And when I ventured that perhaps Lord Derek had lost
some faculties, but that the most brilliant of generals often
seemed at sea in the times of peace and waiting, Breca
asked me where I had read such things, FOR YOU MUST
HAVE READ THEM.
THIS ONE IS NOT ONLY AT SEA BUT CAPSIZED, he
said. FOR THEY ALL ARE AT SEA, CROWN, SWORD, OR
ROSE, AND THIS ONE AT HIS BEST HAD NOT
ENOUGH SENSE TO POUR PISS FROM A BOOT IF THE
DIRECTIONS WAS ON THE HEEL. AND THIS, he said,
pausing to light his pipe, the sword still upright beneath his
elbow, point to the ground, THIS IS THE ONE THEY WILL