Men died in those flames or were crushed under the lumbering weight of the monsters. When the dalesmen retreated into their keeps, the monsters bore inward with their weight against the walls, bringing them down. Such a way of war was unknown, and flesh and blood could not stand against it.
Now that it was too late, the rallying call went forth. Those who lingered in their keeps to be eaten up one by one were the thick-headed and foolish ones. Others gathered into an army under the leadership of four of the southern lords. They had already cut off three of the monsters, which needed certain supplies to keep them running, and destroyed them. But our people had lost the coastline. So the invaders were pouring in more and more men, though their creeping monsters, happily, appeared not so numerous.
The summons came to the northern dales for men to build up a force to contain the invaders, to harass them and restrain them from picking off each dale in turn as one picks ripe plums from a tree.
Hard on the heels of that messenger came the first of the refugees, ones who had blood-claim on us. A party of armsmen escorted a litter and two women who rode, guided through the pass by one of my uncle’s scouts – the Lady Islaugha, Yngilda, and, in the litter, delirious with the fever of a wound, Toross, all now landless and homeless, with naught but what they could carry on their persons.
Yngilda, wed and widowed within two years, stared at me almost witlessly, and had to be led by the hand to the fire, have a cup placed in her fingers, and ordered firmly to drink. She did not seem to know where she was or what had happened to her, save that she was engulfed by an unending nightmare. Nor could we thereafter over get any coherent story from her as to how she had managed to escape her husband’s keep, which was one of those the monsters had battered down.
Somehow,” led by one of her lord’s archers, she had made her way to the dale’s camp and there met the Lady Islaugha, come to tend her son, who had been hurt in one of the attacks against the monsters.
Cut off from any safety in the south, they had turned for shelter to us. Dame Math speedily took over the nursing of Toross, while his mother never left him day or night if she could help.
My uncle was plainly caught between two demands – that of the army battering the invaders and his inborn wish to protect his own, which was the dalesman’s heritage. But, because he had from the first argued that combination against the foe was our only hope, he chose the army.
He marshaled what forces he could without totally stripping the dale, leaving a small but well-trained troop to the command of Marshal Dagale. There was a thaw at the beginning of the Month of the Hawk and, taking advantage of that, he left.
I watched him alone from the gatetower (for Dame Math had been summoned to Toross, who had taken a turn for the worse), just as I had stood in the courtyard minutes earlier pouring the spiced journey drink from the war ewer into the horns of the men to wish them fair fortune. That ewer I still held. It was cunningly wrought in the form of a mounted warrior, the liquid pouring through the mouth of his horse. There was a slight drip from it into the snow. Red it was, like blood. Seeing it, I shivered and quickly smeared over the spot so that I might not see what could be a dark omen.
We kept Ithkrypt ever-prepared, not knowing – for no messengers came now – how went the war, only believing that it might come to us without warning. I wondered if my uncle had dreamed again, and what dire fortellings those dreams had brought him. That we might never know.
There was one more heavy snow, closing the pass, which gave us an illusion of safety while it lasted. But spring came early that year. And with the second thaw a messenger from my uncle arrived, mainly concerned with the necessity for keeping the dale as much a fortress as we could. He said little of what the army in the south had done, and his messenger had only gloom to spread. There were no real battles. Our men had to turn to the tactics of Waste outlaws, making quick raids on enemy supply lines and camps, to do all the damage they could.
He had one bit of news: that Lord Ulric of Ulmsdale had sent a party south under the command of Lord Kerovan, but he himself had been ill. It was now thought that Lord Kerovan might return to take control at Ulmsdale if the invading army forced a landing at Ulmsport as they had at Jorby and other points along the coast.
That night, when I was free of the many duties that now were mine, I took up, as I had not for a long time. I thought on him who had sent it to me. Where did he lie this night? Under the stars with his sword to hand, not knowing when the battle-horn might blow to arms? I wished him well with all my heart, though I knew so little of him.
There was warmth against my palm, and the globe glowed in the dusky room. It did not in that moment seem strange to me; rather it was comforting, easing for a moment my burdens.
The globe was no longer clear. I could not see the gryphon. Rather there was a swirling mist within it, forming shadows – shadows that were struggling men. One was ringed about, and they bore in upon him. I cried out at the sight, though none of it was clear. And I was afraid that this talisman from my lord had now shown me his death. I would have torn the chain from my neck and thrown the thing away; yet that I could not do. The globe cleared, and the gryphon watched me with its red eyes. Surely my imagination alone had worked that.
“There you are!” Yngilda’s voice accused me. “Toross is very uneasy. They wish you to come.”
She watched me, I thought, jealously. Since she had come from behind the curtain of shock that had hidden her on her arrival, she was once again Yngilda of Trevamper. Sometimes I needed all my control not to allow my tongue sharpness in return when she spoke so, as if she were mistress here and I a lazy serving maid.
Toross mended slowly. His fever had yielded to Dame Math’s knowledge, but it left him very weak. We had discovered that sometimes I was able to coax him to eat or to keep him quiet when the need arose. For his sake I was willing to serve so. Yet lately I had come to dislike the way his hand clung to mine when I sat beside him and the strange way he looked at me and smiled, as if he had some claim on me that no one could deny.
This night I was impatient at such a summons, though I obeyed it, for I was still shaken by what I had seen, or imagined I had seen, in the globe. I willed myself not to believe that this had been a true farseeing. Though with men at desperate war, and my lord with them, I could well accept he was so struck down. At that moment I wished that I did have the farsight, or else that we had a Wisewoman with such skill But Dame Math did not countenance the uses of that power.
That party of kinsmen had been only the first of the refugees to find their way hither. If my uncle had farseen that we might have to open our doors and supplies to such, he had not mentioned it. I wondered, marking each morn as I measured out the food for the day (which had become one of my more serious duties since Dame Math had the overseeing of the sick and wounded) whether we could eat even sparingly until harvest, if this continued.
For the most part the newcomers were lands-people, women and children, with a sprinkling of old or wounded men, few of them able to help us man any defense that might be needed. I had spoken with Dame Math and the marshal only the evening before, the three of us deciding that as soon as the weather lightened sufficiently, they would be sent on to the west, where there were dales untouched by war, even to the House of Dames at Norstead. We dared not keep the burden of useless hands here.
Now as I came into the chamber where Toross lay, I was trying to occupy my mind with plans for such an exodus, rather than allow myself to think of the shadows in the globe. About that I could do nothing. I must consider what I could do.