Faerie Knight 167

167 - The Battle of Lutetia IV: Dawn

It is a hateful thing, to wait for news of the battle.

• Elantia, first Queen of Narvonne

☀

17th Day of High Summer’s Moon, AC 297

Clarisant set her feet, bracing herself as the ground shook and the ocean crashed down upon the walls of Lutetia with a deafening roar.  Nearly everything was going according to the king’s plan - Loray was entirely distracted and focused on her, and they had managed to keep the daemon occupied long enough for Dame Margaret to do her work.

The only problem was that Dame Etoile had been severely wounded, and Claire wasn’t certain whether the woman would survive.  Beyond that, it also left her out of position to use Queen Beira’s sword of ice, which was to have been a surprise against the daemon.

Loray fluttered her wings, her feet lifting a bare few inches off the ground as the tremors from the great wave subsided.  “The walls,” she hissed, turning to look down into the dark, drowned city in the river valley below.

If the daemon fled now, they would only have to deal with her later, and she would likely have Avitus at her side.  Claire drew her belt dagger and jumped forward, slashing at Loray.  A cloud of dust flung up into her eyes as the daemon beat her wings, flying backward far enough to take her out of range of the cut.

“For that,” Loray said, “I’ll take your eyes, just like we took your husband’s.”

Claire grinned.  Good.  The daemon’s focus was on her once again.  She could already hear the pounding of hooves that signalled the next stage of the plan.  Only a few moments more.  “My husband,” she taunted, “would cut you down without a second thought.  You’re lucky that Trist isn’t here, or you would be dead already.”

Loray hissed and gathered herself to dart forward, but Yaél was between them suddenly, arming sword in hand, thrusting at the daemon’s heart.  With a shout of frustration, Loray grabbed the blade in her left hand and crumpled it as easily as a child might crush an autumn leaf.  The daemon yanked the twisted sword out of the squire’s grasp and threw it aside.

“You, girl,” Loray said.  “You I’ll just kill.”

“Yaél!”  Henry shouted.  Claire didn’t want to take her eyes off the daemon, but Yaél glanced back just in time to catch the frozen sword of the winter queen in her hand, by the leather-wrapped hilt.

“What is that-” Loray began, and then Sir Lorengel’s lance took her in the shoulder, from behind, piercing her body entirely and lifting her off the ground for a long moment.  Black ichor spurted out around the length of the lance, and the daemon coughed up a huge, sticky gob of it.  

Lacking the strength to keep the daemon up in the air, Lorengel dropped his lance as he rode by, then wheeled his horse around, drawing a sword.  Cynric, two lengths behind him, leaned down out of his saddle and swung, cutting a deep gash into Loray’s shoulder that nearly severed her arm, sending out a second, fan-like spray of ichor.

Loray staggered, then gathered her legs beneath her to leap into the air.  With a shout, Yaél lunged forward, and the frozen blade swung neatly through the daemon’s neck, severing her head.  The body fell to Yaél’s left, and the head to her right, bouncing and rolling down the embankment.  The sword jerked in Yaél’s hand, as if the girl was clutching a venomous snake, and she gritted her teeth to hold on.

“That will be the Tithes,” Loregnel explained, reining in next to them.  “On their way to the faerie queen.  I’ve felt it many times, squire.  It will pass shortly.”

“A waste,” Cynric commented.  “But best to be done with the monster.  Good work.”

“Ettie,” Claire said, turning away from the daemon’s corpse and rushing over to where Henry held the dying woman.  “Can you do anything?  My husband can heal with wine,” she said, looking back over her shoulder at the two Exarchs.  Surely one of them could heal.

Cynric shook his head.  “There is nothing I can do, My Lady,” he said.  “Save to put her across my saddle and take her to one of the barber-surgeons.”

“She won’t survive that long,” Claire protested.  “Trist,” she said.  He’d come to her once before, when she needed him, from across the world.  “I need you.”

“I am sorry for your loss,” Sir Lorengel said, lowering his eyes.  “But we must return to the king.  With Loray dead, and the walls down, it is time to take the city.”

Claire squeezed her eyes shut, and turned back to Ettie, cradled in Henry’s arms.  “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Told you I’d protect you,” Etoile murmured.  Her face was nearly without color.  “Oh.  What’s that?”

A beam of sunlight fell down from the sky above, splashing around them and pushing away the darkness.  Claire looked up, to where the white ring had marked the night sky for weeks.  A golden crescent of fire had taken its place, growing brighter with every breath that passed.

“The Sun Eater,” Yaél said, coming to stand next to them.  Claire saw that the squire had thrust the sword of the faerie queen into the sheath at her belt.  “But I haven’t even seen it here.”

On the heights, the siege engines could be glimpsed more clearly now, and the trebuchets began to fling their loads once again, down onto the flooded city below.  Someone must have given a command to the archers, as well, for great flights of arrows rose in sequence, hung in the air above the river valley, and then fell into the floodwaters.  Claire was amazed that anyone could have survived what Margaret had done to the city walls, but screams rose from the water, showing that some of the men there must have been pierced by arrows.

“Claire.”

She spun around, and he was standing there.  “Trist?”  He was bare-chested and burned, covered in both his own blood and the black ichor of a daemon.  The hateful white cloth still rested over his eyes.

“Good,” he said, shimmering in the air light the haze of heat of the beach at Rocher de la Garde during the height of summer.  Like in Raetia, then, he was not entirely here with her.  But perhaps.

“Henry,” Claire said.  “Your wineskin.  Now.”  The hunter fumbled at his belt and thrust it over to her, and she pushed it at Trist.  “Ettie,” she explained.  “She lost an arm fighting a daemon.  Can you?”

“I cannot,” Trist said.  “I’m sorry, Claire.  I am no longer an Exarch.”

“But you’re here,” Yaél protested.  “How can you be here, then?”

Trist frowned.  “My mother,” he said.  “She was an Exarch while she carried me.  It makes me different, but…”

“Please try,” Claire begged him.  “Please.  She’s protected me so many times, Trist.”

With a sigh, he took the wineskin and ran his hand over it.  “Give this to her,” he said, handing the wineskin back to Claire.  “I do not know if it will work, and I need to go.”

“Go where?” Claire asked.

“Ismet needs my help,” he said, with the air of someone distracted.  “And there is still Avitus.”

“Was it you?” Yaél asked.  “Did you kill the Sun Eater?”

“I did,” Trist said.  “I will come back as soon as I can,” he promised, and then he was gone.

Claire couldn’t think about that right now.  She knelt at Etoile’s side.  “Tip her head back and open her mouth,” she told Henry, and when he’d done so pulled the cork from the wineskin and raised it to her lips.  “Drink, Ettie,” she urged, but the woman was no longer awake.  Some of the watered-wine got down her throat, but some of it spilled out the edges of her mouth.

“It has to be enough,” Henry said.

“It will be,” Claire told him, not stopping until she had poured all of the wine and emptied the flask.  “Get her back to the surgeons, Henry,” she commanded.  “Your part in this battle is done.”

“Get her armor off, then,” the hunter said, and Yaél crouched down to help.  Between the two of them, they unbuckled leather straps and ripped off pieces of steel until Henry could lift Etoile in his arms and carry her back to the tents.

“What about us, m’lady?” Yaél asked, when they were alone.

“You have the sword,” Claire said, looking down at the finger’s length of frozen blade visible above the lip of the sheath.  It had been made for a different sword.

“The master of arms is dead,” Yaél said.  “And Dame Etoile can’t use it.”

Claire closed her eyes.  “Then you should find the king,” she said.  “Ettie was to use it to support the Exarchs.  It is one of the only things we have that can hurt a daemon.”  Forgive me, Trist, she begged silently.

Yaél grinned.  “Yes, m’lady,” the squire said, and took off running along the embankment.  She’d been in the king’s pavilion the night before, serving wine, and would know the plan as well as Claire did.

With all of her companions gone, Claire was left alone.  The archers and the siege engines continued to work, while the infantry waited at the edge of the flood.  She knew the king would do everything he could to soften the enemy before sending his men into the city.

As for her, her part in the battle was done.  She had told them everything she could find in the Marian Codex the night before, while plans were being made.  She had lured out Loray, and if things had gone differently, could easily have died on the daemon’s claws - or worse, been captured and taken away to the city below.

Claire was no warrior, and warriors were what was needed below.  She couldn’t help Trist, and she couldn’t even keep Yaél safe.  There was still one place she could be useful, however, so she turned her steps in the same direction that Henry and Etoile had gone.

Back through the ranks of archers, and the crews of engineers who worked the siege engines, Claire trudged.  She was tired, but she was still alive, and not everyone who had come to save the kingdom would be fortunate enough to be able to say that when the battle was done.

The sky lightened in the first dawn since the siege at Rocher de la Garde, a strange dawn that began with the sun already high in the sky overhead.  It was jarring to see a blue sky once again, and white clouds; to be able to see where to place her feet without squinting into the darkness, or the flickering light of a torch.

By the time Claire reached the tents where the barber-surgeons worked, the sun shone above as if nothing had ever happened, and the day promised to be a warm one.

“Are you wounded, My Lady?” a physician of the Caliphate asked her, his words accented with the intonation of the south.

Claire shook her head.  “No,” she assured him.  “I am well.  I can make a neat stitch, and I will not flinch at the sight of blood.  Where can I be of use?”

The surgeon inclined his head.  “We will need all the help we can get,” he assured her, “once the assault begins.  Come this way.  I will find you a station, and needles to sew with.”

“Thank you,” Claire said, following him into the tent.  Row after row of camp cots stood empty and waiting, with surgeons from both the north and the south, and soldiers’ wives who had followed the army from Falais, all waiting to receive the wounded.  Had it really only been three moons since she’d stitched Trist’s wounds closed, after he’d gone into the Ardenwood?  It seemed like years.

“Finish this, Husband,” Claire whispered.  In the meantime, she would do what she could, to save as many lives as possible.