Peldras nodded. "Thank you."
"May I go now?"
The Ellyl removed his hand from the Staccian's arm and drew his sword. Grasping it by the blade, he presented the hilt. "Take my blade, and my blessing. May Arahila the Fair have mercy upon you, Carfax of Staccia."
He grasped the hilt. It felt good in his palm. Firm. He hoisted it. The blade was light in his grip, its edge keen and silver-bright, its balance immaculate. Ellylon craftsmanship. "Thank you, Peldras."
Once more, the Ellyl nodded. "Farewell, my friend."
ON THE BATTLEFIELD, ALL WAS madness.
The Pelmaran forces had been routed to a man. Last to commit, first to flee. Carfax had to dodge them as he rode, his mount's hooves scrabbling on the loose scree at the base of Beshtanag Mountain. Here and there Beshtanagi wardsmen pursued them. It was hard to tell one from the other, clad alike in leather armor with steel rings, colors obscured by veils of smoke.
No matter. He wasn't here to fight anyone's war.
A pall of smoke hung over the battlefield, which reeked of smoke and sulfur, of charred flesh and spilled gore, of the inevitable stench of bowels voided in death. Carfax ignored it, guiding his horse with an expert hand past the dead and the dying, deserters and their pursuers, avoiding them and thinking of other times.
There had been a girl, once, in Staccia. He had brushed her skin with goldenrod pollen, gilding her freckles. And he had thought, oh, he had thought! He had thought to return home a hero, to wipe away the tears his mother had shed when he left, to smile into his girl's eyes and see her a woman grown, and wipe away the remembered traces of pollen from her soft skin.
Blaise had asked him: Why do you smile, Staccian?
To make a friend of death.
Thickening smoke made his eyes sting. He squinted, and persevered.
Fianna had smiled at him when he brought her pine rosin for her bow. Her Arduan bow, wrought of ordinary wood and mortal sinew. Not this one, that was made of black horn and strung with… strung with what? Hairs from the head of Oronin Last-Born, perhaps, or sinew from the Glad Hunter's first kill, sounding a Shaper's battlecry. It had twisted in her hands when she fought against the Were, refusing to slay its maker's Children.
Not so, here. Oronin's Bow sang in her hands, uttering its single note, naming its victims one by one. She had smiled at him, and he… he had made a friend of death. Here, at the end, there was a hand extended in friendship, and it was one he could take at last. A traitor, yes. He was that. Carfax of Staccia would die a traitor.
Still, there was honor of a kind in dying for a woman's smile. If nothing else, there was that.
He found himself singing a Staccian paean as he rode, and the Ellyl's sword was light in his grip as he swung it, forging a path toward the song of Oronin's Bow. Toward the center, the battle was in progress and it was necessary to fight his way through it. With expertise born of long hours on the drill-field, Carfax wielded the Ellylon blade. Left side, right side! On either side of his mount's lathered neck, the silver-bright blade dipped and rose dripping. A man's snarling face appeared at his stirrup and a spearhead gouged a burning path along his right thigh. Carfax bared his teeth in response and made a slashing cut, shearing away a portion of his opponent's face. Friend or foe? Which was which?
No matter.
Peering through the dense smoke, he won through to where the fighting was fiercest. A tight knot of men, hard to see in their dun-grey cloaks. The kneeling line of Ellylon, pausing in their retreat to fire and fire again, the points of their arrows clattering uselessly off their prey. The fine-wrought faces of the Rivenlost were grim. The dragon's body was vast and gleaming, churning the smoke-filled air. Only portions of it were visible at such close range, too vast for the mortal eye to encompass. Despite the whispered incantations of the Ellylon, the terrible courage of the Borderguardsmen, their weapons clattered harmlessly off its hide. Swords shattered, arrows fell to earth.
After all, what could penetrate those scales? This was no mere dragonling, but one of the ancient ones, one of the last. Even Elterrion the Bold would have hesitated to engage the Dragon of Beshtanag in the fullness of its wrath. Under cover of the devastation it wreaked, a desperate wedge of Beshtanagi wardsmen fell upon the enemy. Hand to hand, blade to blade, hollow-eyed and starving, ready to claim victory at the price of death. Some of the outnumbered Borderguard were standing, many were down. A charnel reek hung over them all. It didn't matter. There was only one person for whom Carfax searched. There was only one whose weapon mattered here.
And amidst all the chaos, she stood, calm and ready.
A smoke-wreathed statue, limned in pure light. Her quiver was empty. The Archer of Arduan had drawn her last arrow, the arrow, tracking the dragon with it, as calmly as though she were hunting rabbit. Oronin's Bow was in her left hand, the fingers of her right hand curled about the string, drawing it taut to her ear. A shaft of white fire, tinged with gold, illuminated the soft tendrils of hair that curled on her cheek.