Men were walking up now, passing Thaune on either side, entering the castle. The big Arbonnais coran named Valery stopped beside him. "Well done," he said quietly. "Now tell me the numbers inside. Do we have a fight on our hands?"
"How many of you are there?"
"Only fifty. Trained mercenaries, though, from Portezza and Gotzland. This isn't an invasion of Gorhaut from Arbonne. This is a rising from within. We hope."
Thaune cleared his throat. "I think about half the castle will be with us." He reached for his belt and unhooked a large key ring. "This unlocks the weapons room—to the right across the courtyard, the double doors with the arch. Girart, who is just behind me, will show you. You may trust him with anything. There might be a hundred, perhaps more, who resist, but they will not be well armed." He cleared his throat again. "I think if En Blaise lets them know he is here there may be fewer who fight."
Blaise heard that. "Let them know?" he echoed in mock indignation. "Of course I'll let them know. I'm the wayward son come home to his father's open arms. There ought to be music, a feast, wine and burning women for my delight. Perhaps that is why you came, father? To surprise me with the warmth of your welcome?" His tone was brittle, febrile. Beside Thaune, Valery of Talair made a small sound but said nothing.
Thaune became aware that the High Elder had now begun murmuring softly, but not to any of them. Somehow the quality of the man's voice, his inward, intense manner, shaped a silence on the bridge in the mist, and gradually, with a growing horror that bit deeper than the cold, Thaune became aware that the High Elder was intoning the denunciation of the god.
"… to the infinite cold that was before the world was or the moons were spoken, before the sun was moved and the stars allowed their light. O, most holy Corannos of ice and all the sacred tongues of fire, unworthy as I surely am in your sight, I beseech thee, in the name of your own ancient gifts to us, that there shall be for this man torments without number to the ending of time. Maggots beneath the skin and worms in his heart, the rotting sickness and the black blood that cannot be stanched. I pray that you send down upon this man who is my son no longer—"
"That is enough." A second voice, cold with distaste. Bertran de Talair. Blaise himself was silent, immobile in the face of what his rather was doing.
"— foul madness and a twisting agony in his bowels, blindness, boils, the stinking corruption of his flesh—"
"I said that is enough!"
"— all of these and more, I most holy Corannos. I pray that he be stricken also with the pestilence that—"
Bertran came around in front of Galbert and, in the midst of this pronunciation of the blackest curse known to the Elders of Corannos, struck him full in the face with an open palm, the way one might slap a servant. Galbert stopped, out of genuine shock as much as anything else. Blaise still hadn't moved. He opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it wordlessly. Ranald de Garsenc looked pale and unsteady beside his father.
"You will be silent," Bertran said savagely. "Ten more words and an archer will shoot. Your son may be unwilling to give such an order, for reasons that escape me, but he assured that I am not. Do not put this, I beg you, to the test."
"Who are you?" Galbert snarled, through gritted teeth.
En Bertran laughed aloud then, as strange a sound in the fog as Thaune had heard all night. "That is three words," he said. "Seven left. Hoard your store. I am sorely offended, though, I would have thought you would surely know the appearance of a man you paid so much to kill last summer."
"Bertran de Talair," said Ranald de Garsenc, his first words. "I remember you from the tournaments."
Galbert's eyes narrowed to slits, but he kept silent, his body rigid with anger. His gloved hands, Thaune saw, were ceaselessly working, opening and closing at his sides, as if longing for someone's throat.
Ranald turned from the duke of Talair to stare at his brother. "What have you done? Turned traitor entirely? Invaded with Arbonne?"
"Hardly," said Blaise, beginning to regain his composure but carefully not looking at his father. "Bertran is here as a friend. My men are mercenaries recruited by Rudel Correze for me, you'll very likely know a number of them—mostly from Gotzland. This is a seizing of Garsenc Castle from you, brother. I am sorry, but it seems a necessary first step, since you yourself are doing nothing at all. Worse than nothing, actually. I intend to take Gorhaut from Ademar with my own countrymen, and without burning women, either."
"I had no choice about that," Ranald said fiercely.
"Not so." It was, surprisingly, Valery of Talair, behind Thaune by the portcullis. He was invisible in the fog, his disembodied voice flat and final as that of some judge at the iron gates of the afterworld. "We can say no and die. It is a choice, my lord of Garsenc. In the face of some things asked of us it is the only choice."
No one spoke in reply. There was silence on the bridge, heavy as the fog. Thaune heard only quick footsteps and saw cloaked and hurrying shapes as Blaise's mercenaries went by him into the forecourt. There had been no alarm raised within Garsenc; the world was wrapped in mist like a creation of dream.
And it was in that stillness, as if it were a part of such a dreaming, that Thaune then heard the rumble of hoof beats to the east. A great many, as if the horsemen of the Night Ride were come down among them from the sky, from the train of the god, to ride over the fog-shrouded earth and destroy.
"What is that?" Valery took two steps forward and stopped.
"Get the men inside!" said Blaise sharply. "We have to control the castle. They did send an army! Thaune, have the portcullis lowered, quickly!"
Thaune was already moving, shouting a command to his two guardsmen. From beyond, in the fog, the drum roll of unseen hooves grew louder. There were torches visible now, and shadowy horses, and from the distance between the first and the last of those carried flames, Thaune realized that an army had indeed come.
It had always been likely they would fail. He had not made his choice last autumn because of any measured assessment of the chances of success. He did not want to die on a pyre, though. His only prayer in that moment was that so much mercy might be allowed. He wondered if, when he crossed to the god, he would be allowed to walk with his father again, in the wide meadows of Corannos, in the gentle light.
"I shall set the torch to your burning myself," said Galbert de Garsenc, speaking to his son, as if giving voice to Thaune's own terror. He was smiling again now, a glittering triumph in his eyes, reflecting the torches' glow.
"That," said Bertran de Talair, "is two words too many."
"Bertran!" said Blaise quickly.
"Valery," said the duke of Talair in the same moment. And simultaneous with the two names spoken something sang past Thaune in the fog and he heard the High Elder of Corannos cry out as an arrow embedded itself in his shoulder through the links of the mail he wore.
"Ten more," said Bertran de Talair calmly, "and we will twin that in your other arm. Tell me—in less than ten words, mind you—do you think these horsemen will attack us at risk of your life, my lord High Elder? Why don't we wait for them here and consider the question at leisure?"
He was, thought Thaune, unbelievably calm.
The hoofbeats had been a rolling as of thunder but gradually stopped now beyond the end of the bridge in the wide, clear space before the woods. There were a great many torches; Thaune could see the outline of horses and riders, bulky figures heavily armed.
"We have the High Elder here, and the duke of Garsenc," Blaise called out, his voice knifing into the fog. "Have a care for their lives. Will you declare yourselves?"
His father, clutching at his left arm, laughed then. A harsh, ugly sound, at odds with the effortless beauty of his voice. "Who do you think it is?" he snarled.
"Six words," said Bertran quietly.
From amid the mist and the weaving torches a voice called back, cold and austere, "There is no hostage you could name who will stay my hand or those of my men if we are minded to strike. Is it
Blaise de Garsenc to whom I speak?"
"Careful!" said Rudel Correze sharply, under his breath.
"No point denying it," Thaune heard Blaise reply softly. "Our only hope is the hostages, whatever he says. He might be bluffing. He must be bluffing."
There was a sound of horses approaching the far end of the bridge, and then the creak of an armoured rider dismounting. From behind, Thaune finally heard the rattle and the clang of the portcullis as the guards finished lowering it. Valery of Talair was beside him, another arrow to his bow. Thaune drew his sword.
"I am Blaise de Garsenc," said the tall coran Thaune had sworn an oath to serve and to have for his king.
"I thought it might be so," said the unseen man in a voice crisp with resolution. "I had hoped my information was correct, that I would find you here tonight."
And into the torchlight, heavily cloaked against the cold, strode Fulk de Savaric, to kneel on the planks of the bridge before Blaise.
He looked up, and the hovering torchlight fell upon the square, fair-haired, intelligent features he shared with all his family. Thaune, catching his breath, taking an involuntary step forward, saw that the duke of Savaric was not smiling. "My lord, will you accept my sworn homage and the hand of a friend? Can you make use of a thousand men from Savaric and the lands of the north who share your feelings about the Treaty of Iersen Bridge and the men who rule us now?"
Long afterwards, Thaune remembered looking up then, almost expecting to see the moons appear like beacons in the fog, as if the heavens and the dark earth around them must somehow mirror the glow that seemed to be emanating from this bridge. It was still thick as river mud overhead, though, the sky lost to sight in the fog and only the nearest torches lending their light to the tableau before him as he looked back down to see En Blaise take Fulk de Savaric's offered hands formally between his own.
It was in his heart, not in the sky, Thaune realized, that the moons were beginning to shine again. The cold of the long night seemed lessened by the warmth of that inner light. He wondered, after, if the others on the bridge had had such an illusion, if they had all looked up to see if the sky had truly changed.
That might have been an explanation, though not, by any means, an excuse for what happened.
What happened was that Galbert de Garsenc, in the very moment his younger son was formally accepting the homage of the most powerful lord of the northern marches of Gor-haut, rammed one burly shoulder into the coran on his right, hammered a muscled forearm into the face of his other guard and leaped off the bridge, an arrow still quivering in his left
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arm, to disappear into the shrouded darkness of the dry moat.
After a frozen moment there was a babble of sound on the bridge. Valery of Talair and Rudel Correze hurtled into the moat after him. Thaune heard a snarled Portezzan obscenity as the latter landed badly on the uneven, rock-strewn surface below.
"He won't get far," said Fulk de Savaric as Blaise helped him to his feet. Over his shoulder, de Savaric snapped commands in the darkness. A moment later Thaune heard horses galloping and saw torches moving again in the mist.
Of all of them it was Blaise who seemed least surprised. "If he makes the woods," he said, almost musingly, "I doubt we'll find him."
"He has to get out of the moat first," said Bertran de Talair, "and he's got a wounded arm."
"Not badly wounded," Blaise said, shaking his head, still with that detached air about him, as if he had almost anticipated this. "He wears heavy mail, double-linked. I doubt the arrow went deep. Ring the moat, though," he said to Fulk de Savaric. "There's at least a chance your men might see him climbing out."
There came the sound of laughter then, laced with mockery, with something else in it that Thaune could not quite identify. "He won't be climbing out," said Ranald, duke of Garsenc, to his brother. "He's under the castle already, and will be out from it and gone before morning. There's a tunnel in from the moat that no one knows about, and another from the dungeon level that leads away. A long distance away. You won't find him, brother." In silence the two men looked at each other.
"Blaise, quickly, do you know where it leads? We can get to the exit before him." It was Bertran, speaking with urgency for the first time. Galbert de Garsenc, Thaune abruptly remembered, had offered two hundred and fifty thousand in gold last summer for the death of de Talair.
Blaise was shaking his head though, looking at his brother. "This was done after I left." His mouth twisted slightly. "Ranald wouldn't have mentioned it otherwise."
"We could make you tell us where the tunnels are," said En Bertran to Ranald de Garsenc very quietly. There was something frightening in his voice now. Thaune wondered how he could ever have arrived at the notion that the Arbonnais men were soft.
The duke of Garsenc was still a handsome man, tall and well built, the image of what a lord should be. He looked down upon the slight, unprepossessing figure of the duke of Talair and said contemptuously, "Really, my lord? What will you do? Set me on fire?"
Blaise said something then that Thaune could not hear. His brother did hear it though, and turned quickly back to him, his arrogance fading.
"Go ahead," Blaise said, more loudly. "I mean it. If you want to go with him you will not be stopped or followed." Ranald's expression had become confused, hesitant. He looked like a man who wanted a drink, thought Thaune. A cruel thought, he knew, but it was there. He had lived in this castle long enough. He knew the duke.
"If you want to, though, you can stay," Blaise added. "I will trust you among us if you give me your oath. I have never known you to lie, Ranald. I will not assume you would do so now. If you can see anything clearly tonight you must surely realize that this is the chance of your life. Probably the last chance, brother. Do you want to free yourself from him or not? He is gone, down that tunnel, away from both of us, back to Ademar. You don't have to follow him, Ranald, and I will not make you stay. You have the first free choice you've had in a long time."
"If I kneel and swear fealty to a younger brother who ought to have been a cleric of Corannos? Is that my choice?"
"Is it so evil a course? Does it matter what he was supposed to become all those years ago?" It was Fulk de Savaric who spoke, as Blaise remained silent looking at his brother by the wan light of the torches in the mist.
Beyond the bridge, Thaune could hear men shouting and the galloping horses as corans raced to surround the moat. He shared Ranald's certainty: they were not going to find Galbert de Garsenc, not in the mists of this night, not in the morning, even if the sun returned. At the back of his mind, behind his awareness of the miracle of their triumph and Fulk de Savaric's sworn allegiance, he felt a flicker of fear, like a tongue of flame.
Blaise cleared his throat, oddly tentative with his brother, as he had been with the father. "I do not request that you kneel before me, only that you follow my lead, Ranald." He hesitated. "I think you know, if the roles were reversed I would have been proud to swear homage to you." He stopped again, visibly struggling for words, as if wrestling with something difficult. "I also think you know there was a time I would have followed you to the end of the earth had you asked me to."
"But why," said Duke Ranald de Garsenc, after a silence, "would I ever have wanted to go to such a place? Or to have you there with me?"
Blaise said nothing at all to that. He lowered his head.
"You are a greater fool than I even guessed," said Bertran de Talair, but softly now, almost with regret. "Bring my lord Ranald his horse," he called out to the invisible corans beyond the end of the bridge. "The most puissant duke of Garsenc is leaving our poor company for the pleasure of his father's and the high grace of Ademar's court."
Blaise was still silent. Thaune, behind him, could not see his face. In a way he was glad of that. Even after years in this castle he found that what lay between the three men of Garsenc—like a thicket of spear shafts in the earth, iron heads angled to kill—was too much for him sometimes
. Tonight, suddenly, had become one of those times, as if the destiny of nations was bound up in the darkness of this castle, a darkness that went far deeper than the mist and fog of a winter's night. They heard a horse being led up onto the bridge.
"Someone help the duke to mount," Bertran said, with the same grim courtesy.
"No need," said Ranald shortly, and he mounted in one smooth motion. He curvetted his horse and looked down upon his brother. "Are you expecting me to thank you now?" he asked. Again there was that note in his voice, the one Thaune could not quite identify.
Blaise looked up. He shook his head. "I thought you might ask about your son though." A cruel question, though perhaps not cruelly meant. Thaune wasn't sure; he didn't understand the younger son either. He saw Ranald's jaw tighten. Blaise added, in a flat voice, "I am proposing to name him my heir in Gorhaut, with Fulk as regent, should I die in this war. Does that interest you at all?"
He had to be quick, Thaune thought, he had to be very fast to have thought of this already. He turned to look at Fulk de Savaric, but there was nothing to be read there at all, nor in the features of Bertran de Talair beside Fulk. These were men used to the play of power, and to hiding their responses to it.
Ranald de Garsenc was less able to mask his feelings. "How touching," he shot back, as if firing a crossbow bolt. "How wonderful to see that everyone in my family has plans for my son. It does free me of a father's anxiety, I must say."