‘These guards,’ pressed the Master of Shadow, conversational. ‘Do they travel in state?’
To his left, a wiry scout bowman spat. ‘With the tribute chests for the Light, bound to Southshire? You’re kidding. They’re flagged and tasselled and prinked for the ball-room, except the damned weapons are lethal.’
The threatened smile gave rise to a chuckle that caught the clan reivers aback. ‘I’d hand you that silk,’ said Rathain’s brash prince. ‘And the looted stones, too, without any-one pricking a finger. Are you up to the challenge?’
The lead scout stared back, breathless. ‘The bride’s name is Glendien, and she’ll hack your bollocks to mincemeat for sure.’ He eyed the slight frame of the royal before him, still trying to measure the fitness beneath the unassuming, loose shirt. ‘That’s if Kyrialt doesn’t dismember you first, for starting a war on his wedding day’
‘No deaths,’ promised Arithon. ‘Every townsman who marched from Sanshevas this morning will be left hale enough to salve his disgrace in the arms of the harlots at Southshire.’
The clan spokesman shifted his piercing regard. To Vhandon, whose greying hair and old scars suggested more sober experience, he questioned, ‘Your liege is delirious?’
‘Moonstruck? Not in this case.’ The veteran swordsman nodded towards Talvish, whose long fingers were tapping a fretful tattoo on the held scabbard of Arithon’s sword. ‘We were Duke Bransian’s, before we swore oath to Rathain. Though we serve here by choice, the Sorcerer Luhaine was the one who passed us the appeal for the violation done in the Tiriacs. Our liege plans to answer. If you don’t come along, I can assure you, he’s committed enough to finish the errand alone.’
Talvish broke in, off-handedly mocking. ‘As you see, he’s born reckless, and mettlesome, besides. Why leave him to claim all the glory?’
Which vaunted dare, no young creature from Alland could pass off. Not in front of five cheeky foreigners whose pressuring taunts tossed them the rank provocation. The clan spokesman returned a caustic grin. ‘West,’ he said briskly. ‘Better not regret. If the fat prophet lags, we’ll have no choice but to leave him.’
The company of scouts coalesced and moved out, swift as wraiths through the resinous shade of the forest. Fionn Areth earned their jeering comment as his footfalls snapped twigs, with Talvish’s tirades in his defence giving even their raffish tongues pause. Arithon’s tread made no sound on the matted needles, and his eyes, like sheared emerald, watched everything.
‘Why are you conniving?’ Dakar pressured point-blank. A low branch hooked his beard. He clawed the sprig off, puffing at a short-strided trot in his effort to stay abreast.
The Prince of Rathain flashed him a fathomless glance. The quiet in him was a fearsome force since his return from the maze under Kewar. Deepened into a secretive well, his presence seemed immutable as the patriarch pines, whose moss-hoary trunks wore a silence to outlast the snags of mortality. ‘A bride-gift,’ was Arithon’s simplistic reply. But from him, such self-honesty always raised far more goading questions than answers.
If the rushed pace was meant to defuse the madcap thrust of the enterprise, the tactic fell short. The prince’s two liegemen proved as fit as steel nails, and his young double, too pridefully game to give way. Dakar stayed the course from tenacious concern for the havoc he hoped to subdue. Arithon himself kept his jocular spirits. The scurrilous tales he shared with the clan archers provoked groans, which devolved into breathless, choked laughter.
‘A damned masterbard’s memory,’ Dakar groused, sorely tried, his arms crossed to clamp down a chuckle. Even to his jaundiced ear, the collection of gossip was dazzling.
Wiser than before, Fionn Areth said nothing. Padding at heel behind Vhandon and Talvish, he watched the slight man who wore his mirrored face use bold humour to refigure the archers’ distrust. The method held a certain deft familiarity. With engaging skill, Arithon tried the Shandian scouts, sparking their differences of character and temperament much as he had done with the Evenstar’s sail crew. His teasing barbs, in fact, were not playful. Inside an hour, he must weave this band’s loyalty into a force that would risk life and limb at a word.
For the smallest misjudgement must surely tempt fate; the mistake enacted by one hesitation would bring down the hornet’s nest on them. Cold sober amid the snatched bursts of hilarity, Vhandon admitted the odds of assaulting the caravan were tantamount to a suicide. He did not appear unduly concerned, which drew tacit inquiry from one of the female archers.
‘This isn’t about killing,’ Talvish agreed. ‘Yon prince has his ways. He’ll shred your nerves, easily, six times in a day. But he doesn’t go back on his promises.’
They reached the sand bluffs with an hour to spare, a reckoning that would be reliable. Selkwood’s clansmen knew the habits of every road-master plying the coast-road from Sanshevas to Southshire. Sprawled in the shaded brush at the crest, and avid as weasels awaiting their moment to fall on the boastful fox, they watched Arithon s’Ffalenn size up the terrain. They noted the fact he took nothing for granted, but tested the dry, crumbled slope for assurance the footing would be a hindrance to horseflesh. His prowling assessed the sun angle and vantage, then measured the curve of the road-bed below. Immersed in their bristling, insular silence, the scouts approved: his activity did not hush the scrape of the crickets. His soft step left the weeds undisturbed.
The clan spokesman dispatched a fleet messenger and another hidden observer, with instructions to keep watch past the western rise. Then he hooked a brown, callused thumb through his belt, obstructively primed to thrash every detail of the prince’s forthcoming deployment.
Contrariwise, Arithon suggested the interim amusement of a high-stakes contest of darts.
The archers were thunderstruck. Arrived on location, they expected the tight planning that trade-marked a successful foray. Shown this dismissive, frivolous attitude, their morale devolved to disgust. The Master of Shadow, oblivious, began naming tree knots for targets. Head bare, cloak discarded, he paced out distances and set the lines. Talvish looked on with impervious jade eyes. Of Vhandon, standing with folded arms, somebody asked, breathless, if his Grace was light-witted, or drunk.
A splutter of laughter greeted the jibe.
Arithon gave back his effusive amusement. ‘A splendid idea, if we had any beer. Perhaps we should start? Or we won’t have the time to settle our bets on the champion.’ From inside his jerkin, he produced a wrapped bundle, which, unrolled, contained twelve feathered darts. He passed three to Fionn Areth. ‘First round at ten yards. Show these infants what fibre you’re made of?’
His double flushed with surprise and accepted. Fionn’s style turned out to be enviously precise. Shown a calm disregard for their festering contempt, and left with a score that would tax the steadiest eye of their favourite, the scouts joined the match out of devilment. Their first man threw well, and their second, still better. Pitched to simmering curiosity, their spokesman held back. He would wait to see how this prince caught their back-lash when the caravan appeared with its escort of three hundred strong.
Fionn Areth lost at darts when the winded look-out arrived to announce the approach of the cavalcade, and a negligent throw by Rathain’s prince as he turned capped the Araethurian’s score by a point. The nettled clansmen closed in a tight ring, as the quarry’s deployment was mapped in detail. Arithon heard. His dark head stayed bent, his down-turned gaze fixed on the ground without focus. Dakar, who owned mage-sight, saw past daft distraction and noted a man who listened with more than his five mortal senses.
‘Watch out for the lancers. They’re hot, but not drowsy,’ the impertinent runner summed up. ‘Their mounts still act fresh. The stinging flies will be keeping them restive, never mind that the league out of Ganish won’t hire themselves out to nurse-maid a trained pack of fools.’
Arithon stirred. ‘Ten to the cart-load with a round fifty, slogging at head and tail. The league scouts are the problem. Dakar, you’ll divert the
m? Something petty that sends them astray. Sun in the eyes? A snakes’ den in the rocks? I won’t need even ten minutes.’
If mirth still threatened the ghost of a smile, the crisp phrasing redressed the earlier lack of authority. Nor had the contest at darts, after all, been a gambit launched out of whimsy. The six clansmen ranked behind Fionn Areth found themselves called out in succession. Each was issued two darts and told to seek a concealed position at spaced intervals above the highway. There, they would wait upon Arithon’s signal.
‘Pink the mules where your missiles will cause the least harm. Your task is to incite pandemonium, then to pull back. Under no circumstance will you risk being seen,’ Arithon finished off, firm. ‘If one of the lancers throws straight with a knife, I won’t drag a carcass where a strong back could have been better used to haul booty’
Released to their posts, the dartmen slipped away through the scrub fringing the rim of the bluff.
The Prince of Rathain made his last dispositions. ‘Fionn, your sword will guard Dakar’s back. Will someone loan Vhandon and Talvish a bow? They’ll shoot to wound on the odd chance any head-hunters blunder through the Mad Prophet’s spelled screen of diversion.’
The assigned parties moved out, which sensible bent began to appease the scout spokesman’s outraged sensibilities. Rathain’s sworn liegemen could be trusted to defend their own. In positions that carried the most critical risks, this prince had not placed his casual reliance upon strangers sized up through banter. The avid pause hung. Wolves on a scent, the rest of Alland’s clan company awaited the follow-up plan for the raid.
Yet the Prince of Rathain bestowed no more orders.
The scouts shifted, impatient. They exchanged pointed glances. A few fingered their knives as no further development happened. Arithon stepped to the edge of the bluff without another word spoken. There, he settled, his weathered jerkin melding his form into the patched shade of a thicket.
Left at a loss, the clan spokesman closed in and pushed the exasperated question of tactics. ‘A dozen target darts in some mules will leave us the prey of three hundred enraged men-at-arms.’ As his pique raised no impact, he flushed slowly scarlet. ‘If you’ve evolved a supporting plan, we’re waiting to hear before the damned vanguard’s on top of us!’
‘Catch the spoils,’ said Arithon. Unswerving, his gaze remained on the road. ‘You’ll need your hands free. The method at hand being an untried experiment, the silk you’ve promised to Kyrialt’s bride might wind up wedged in the tree-tops.’
‘Dharkaron’s black vengeance!’ the clan spokesman ranted. ‘For this I’ve left my best bowmen to risk a fatal encounter with scalpers?’
‘Risk?’ Arithon faced around and encompassed the scouts, now formed into a mutinous cordon. Slightly made, drawn erect, his hands loose at his sides, he displayed unconcern that verged upon lethal insult. ‘Your initial objection was bloodshed, I thought? My word as given, those terms won’t be compromised.’
Fenced in by stiff silence, the Master of Shadow raised his eyebrows.
‘Mounted lancers and men-at-arms travelling in state will not scale a sand scarp for the sake of a few jabbed draft teams. Your companions were told to stay outside harm’s way. Do you fear they might compromise orders?’
‘What does such a prank have to do with lifting secured goods from the hands of an armed division?’ The clan spokesman forestalled several hotheaded scouts, who shoved in a murderous thrust forward. Just as openly cross, he let fly in contempt. ‘Your Grace. You cannot expect our score of bowmen to hold open the bleeding breach.’
‘I don’t.’ Arithon’s brazen calm was raw flame, to raise hackles and spark conflagration. ‘Unless you wish yourselves martyred for no reason at all, you will leave the armed townsmen to me.’
‘Arrogant upstart!’ The incensed spokesman would end the charade. Prepared to allow his chafed company to draw steel, he issued his final warning. ‘You are dangerous, prince! I swear by the forebears who hallowed my lineage, royal bastard or not, the protection you offer is folly. Call off the raid. Stand down and disarm. Or I will cut you off at the knees as a creature who’s lost to insanity!’
‘Do that!’ cracked Arithon. ‘For I need to know now whether Erlien’s finest have the nerve I will need to curb a false religion without starting a massacre. How long do you think your clans can survive the unified onslaught of Lysaer’s new breed of fanatics? Today, I admit, we’re redeeming poached crystals. Tomorrow, next week, the stakes are no less than the blood heritage of your families. We are talking the future fate of the free wilds that uphold the compact in Shand.’
The clan spokesman gaped, while his crowding companions looked on in dazed shock.
‘Please do as I say?’ No longer smiling, or harmless; not anything less than an initiate master clothed in the force of his self-aware presence, Rathain’s prince dropped his disarming pretence. ‘Leave me to my work. Or your dartmen will be unsupported in fact. Let that happen, my word as my life, I will call in my friends, turn my back on your High Earl, and forget this place ever existed.’
Unaware that one man was their self-proclaimed equal, the sunwheel lancers and the company of foot hired as escort to Southshire led the caravan around the bend. The risen sun cut the humid air like ruled brass. Hot in their state finery, and bedeviled by flies, the mounted troop tussled with sidling mounts. If their lance pennons frayed in the stiffening sea-breeze, the tips wore a razor-edged polish. Ganish league’s trackers prowled, hungry for scalps. Since their pay shares were kept deliberately lean, the dearth of earned bounties made their patrol of the thicketed verges dead keen.
With the last fifteen leagues and a straight road before them, the hardened men guarding the Light’s gathered tribute breathed the flat tang of stirred dust. They spoke softly and stayed sharp. A veteran riding the wilds by Selkwood well knew not to slacken his reins. Because of the bullion, the drays were mule-drawn. The loads were kept light to hasten the pace, an advantage not shared by an ox-train.
‘Move on,’ the road-master exhorted the drivers. ‘Push those teams. Keep them going!’
The lancers held to their nervous formation, given the inauspicious lay of the land. Low sun cast a scintillant glare through the brush at the rim of a sandy bluff. The dazzle shone from buffed helms and gold braid, with the panoply of crested saddle-cloths and surcoats a gaudy welter that muddled the eyes.
A jay called in the scrub. A louder one answered. The chief tracker from Ganish had reported no sign of clan presence, which only whetted the road-master’s jumpy unease. Ruffled by the same wary instinct, the lance captain raised his voice and reordered his mounted lines. The wagons were pinched inside his bristling defence when the first of the mules flung up its head, brayed, and bolted pell-mell down the highway.
The guard riding nearest did not see the dart embedded in its left haunch. He was yelling, doused under his flapping surcoat, which had jerked itself free of his belt, and blanketed his face and head. The spire on his helm had poked through, with the fabric pinned like a tent. His shrieks emerged, muffled. As he clawed at crazed clothing, his mount shied hard sidewards, and crashed through the ranks of his fellows. The formation collapsed to a clattered snarl of lances. The cloth-bundled victim fell off.
‘Mind your damned lines!’ the troop captain screamed. His mount backed and sidled, and snorted with nerves. While fighting the reins, he had time to notice that, length and breadth of his column, the upset was disastrously spreading.
Every third man seemed beset by his clothing, and every horse snapped and kicked as though air itself turned and badgered its sweated flanks. Then his seasoned mare bucked. He was rammed from behind by a four-in-hand team, rampaging in stampede. The wagon dragged after them, shorn of its wheels. Its bashed undercarriage furrowed the road like a plough, and its sprung planks belched trade goods helter-skelter. The ruckus proved too much for his horse, which skittered, then bolted in panic. Tossed in an ignominious heap, then forced to roll into a thorn
brake to escape being trampled, the troop captain reached for his horn with intent to rally his dismembered troop. The drill call was a loss. The brass instrument had been flattened beneath his mailed hip, and the mouthpiece was jammed full of gravel.
Standing again, he bellowed, in vain. A choking dust spiralled up on the breeze. Pandemonium milled all about him. Men’s voices unravelled to yelps and shrieked curses. Chaos worsened from moment to moment. The lance captain craned his neck, seeking one mounted rider, or the capture of a loose horse. He was met instead by three staggering cart-wheels bearing down on a collision course.
‘Damn things are possessed!’ his lieutenant’s cry warned him.
Past recourse, the captain dived flat in the ditch to escape becoming mown down.
‘Fiends!’ the beleaguered road-master howled. ‘The talisman’s failed! Lost its charge, or went wrong. Now we’re plague struck!’
Around him, beset drivers yanked in vain on their reins. Their veering mule teams locked iron mouths. Eyes rolling, the beasts entangled themselves and kicked up their heels, snapping traces. Some snarled in knots and jostled their way off the road. Drays slammed into trees. Others were gutted, hung up on bushes and rocks. One after another, more vehicles wrecked. With disconcerting intelligence, the nimble sprites were still jerking the linchpins from revolving wheel hubs. Wagon-beds tilted. Dropped axles gouged earth. The hard slew of the impacts sprung the pegged boards and broke the fastenings holding the tail-gates. Tarpaulins tore, and stacked bolts tumbled out, burst their ties, and disgorged a rainbow cascade of fine silk.
Bedlam reigned. Length and breadth of the roadway, the caravan unravelled as fast as a snag in knit wool. Unshackled wheels bowled over the foot-troops. Surcoats wrapped wrists and fouled weapons. Blinded men snarled and cursed. Snared beyond remedy, they drew their edged weapons, hacking until their fiend-possessed finery subsided in twitching shreds. Those naked few who stripped to win free raced to catch the crazed mules. One step, or three, they soon toppled over, tripped up by the unreeled fabric. The dumped tribute chests had smashed into splinters and kindling. Coin sacks untied, and the air clinked and flashed as the iyats snatched up their contents. The liberated bullion spun into a glittering swarm and scattered into the scrub.