—Job 18:10
In the great hall at Rhemuth, another loyal Haldane man also labored in the service of his king: Nigel, continuing to act the unaware potential victim. After nearly three solid hours of court, he was beginning to wonder whether both his Deryni sources could have been mistaken about a Torenthi plot to kill him, for not one but two Torenthi delegations had already been presented, made their petitions, and gone their way without incident.
A Bremagni embassy was presenting credentials now, its ambassador making much of handing over what seemed like an endless array of documents, each ragged and weighty along the bottom edge with bright-hued waxen seals. Another group of monks would be next, and then one from Fathane, on the Torenth-Corwyn border. Perhaps that was where the attack would come from.
The hall was warm and stuffy. Nigel loosened the throat of his tunic and nodded agreeably to the clark passing the last of the Bremagni scrolls to the scribes ranked at the side of the hall. Conall was growing restless with inactivity. Little Liam was yawning in his chair. Saer had come in twice to bring him “messages,” but actually to satisfy himself yet again that all was in readiness.
Nigel was just reflecting on how ideal a time this would be for the attack to come, while everyone’s edge was blunted by the tedium of the warm afternoon, when it came, indeed, erupting without preamble, not from the suspicious Fathane merchants, but from the midst of the monks approaching to present their petitions.
The first men were already at the foot of the dais when they made their move. The “abbot” and his “chaplain” where halfway up the steps before even Nigel, watching for an attack, realized that this was it. As weapons, not petitions, appeared from beneath robes and a sea of brown-clad figures surged forward, the first two making for Liam, legitimate merchants began screaming and scurrying like mice to get out of their way.
Conall saw it at the same time and exploded into motion, shouting for Saer as he shoved young Payne out of harm’s way, sword clearing scabbard just in time to block the first attacker’s determined lunge at his father. Simultaneously, Nigel threw himself over backward in his chair and yanked the startled Liam right off his stool, somersaulting both of them off the back of the dais and clamping one arm hard across the boy’s throat to send him swiftly into unconsciousness if Liam tried using his Deryni powers to help his would-be rescuers.
Deryni powers were not an issue in the battle concurrently being waged between Duncan McLain and his Mearan attackers on the plain of Dorna. Deryni magic could not reverse the momentum of the wedge of heavy cavalry that Sicard of Meara had driven into the main Cassani army, cutting off Duncan’s overextended strike force from his support.
Nor did there appear to be much chance that Duncan’s commanders could break the widening Mearan wedge and effect a rescue. General Burchard and Jodrell would be gnashing their teeth and frantically contemplating actions Duncan never would have even considered, but Sicard’s army was far larger than they had dreamed. No wonder Kelson had met only token resistance in the south. Already, the armies were evenly matched in strength, and more Mearan troops continued to pour in from the west.
Duncan’s own situation was hardly any more promising, squeezed between Sicard and Gorony with only a few hundred men and trying desperately to dash ahead of the Mearan wedge and yet foil the Mearans’ plans. They were some of his best, and might have hoped to hold against Gorony alone, but they would have no chance of surviving the onslaught of fresh troops now pouring in from the northeast to reinforce him—more episcopal knights now joining the Connaiti mercenaries surging off the fells, all of them mounted on grey battle chargers. And the man who led them, a blue cross emblazoned across his white surcoat, wore a mitre, not a helmet, on his proud grey head.
“Dear God, it’s Loris!” Dhugal murmured, shocked, as he and his father reined up at the top of a little rise and looked around wildly for the next angle of flight.
“Aye. And it appears he’s brought his own little episcopal death squad,” Duncan replied. “How could I have been so stupid as to let us fall into this? God, he must want me badly!”
“I doubt he’d mind getting his hands on me, either,” Dhugal muttered, clearly awed, for he had never seen so many armed men before. “What are we going to do?”
“What else can we do? Try to fight our way out, I suppose, for all the good it will do, though I don’t see how we can hope to get through that.” He swept an arm toward the main Mearan force, now engaging in fierce battle with his own army, then shifted his attention to a possible opening between Gorony’s troops and the Mearan left flank, away from Loris. “Let’s try over that way. They may take us anyway, but we’re not going down without one hell of a fight!”
Their enemy appeared prepared for such a fight, however, and spent wave after wave of men ensuring that Duncan and his immediate warband should not escape through any possible bolthole. Again and again, their desperate dashes for freedom were cut off, until no choice remained but to stand and fight. The ducal guard surrounding Duncan fought valiantly, Dhugal and his MacArdry levies putting up a fierce defense at their backs and for a while even holding against ever-increasing numbers, but it gradually became clear that even border bravery was not going to be enough to save them. When yet another assault by fresh Mearan troops drove a new wedge into their midst, cutting off Duncan from Dhugal and his MacArdry borderers, Duncan began to acknowledge the inevitable.
He still had his ducal guard around him, and knew they would defend him to the death, but it was only a matter of time. Loris’ knights were working closer and closer. They were going to get through to him eventually. As he tried to think how to sell his life most dearly, hacking mechanically at one attacker after another, he could catch the occasional glimpse of Loris sitting silently on the next ridgetop on a snow white horse, his episcopal banner floating above his head, directing ever more men in his direction.
The battle was taking Dhugal and his loyal MacArdry henchmen farther and farther away from him, too. The little knot of borderers was holding its own so far, but he had no idea how long that could continue. And as if that were not enough, he saw more riders joining Loris: lightly mounted and armored, but carrying short, deadly little recurve bows.
Archers!
“Archers, take aim!” Conall shouted, as he engaged his first assailant and kicked the second in the groin, ducking aside to evade and parry a curved Saracen blade in the hands of a third.
The shock value of thirty archers leveling their bows at every stranger in the hall had its desired effect, at least for a few seconds. Saer’s men continued to pour through the doorway beside the dais, but only they and Conall’s men, already grappling with the first of the attackers, did not look up, though the fighting lessened hardly at all. The poor merchants innocently caught up in the midst of the battle were thrown into even greater panic as they realized their danger, and scrabbled even more urgently to get out of the way.
“Get that man,” Nigel shouted, as he saw one attacker shed his monk’s robe surreptitiously and take off behind one of the legitimate merchants fleeing the hall, trying to pass himself off as one of them in the confusion.
But at least if there were Deryni among the attackers, as Nigel had feared, they did not betray themselves as that by trying to strike back with their powers. Perhaps, seeing that their intended victim had not been at all as unprepared as they had expected, they hoped to hold those powers in reserve for a later escape attempt, if their initial attack failed. Or perhaps the physical menace of armed defenders simply precluded the concentration needed to focus those powers.
“Everyone drop your weapons and freeze!” Nigel shouted, struggling to a sitting position with the terrified Liam pinned against his chest. “Archers, at the count of three, I want you to shoot anyone who’s still armed and moving, unless you know for certain that he’s ours. One—two—”
Weapons began clattering onto the floor well before Nigel said, “Three,” but not all of the attackers were ready to adm
it defeat. No rain of arrows materialized, but for several seconds, the hall echoed to the twang of bowstrings and the dull thump of arrows into flesh, grunts of struggle changing to screams of pain, as the archers methodically picked off five individuals who yet refused to give it up. Two more attackers had to be physically wrestled to the floor and overpowered, being too closely engaged with the defenders for the archers to get a clear shot. One innocent bystander was also wounded, though not seriously, when his panic got the better of reason and he attempted to bolt for freedom.
Liam wailed throughout, struggling hysterically, weeping and hiccoughing until Richenda, at Nigel’s signal, came down to take him in her arms and soothe his terror, finally persuading him to drink a mild sedative she had prepared against just such a likelihood. Rothana was given the task of taking him off to bed, and staying with him until she was sure he slept.
Soon Conall and Saer had everyone in custody who was not personally known to themselves or to Nigel: seventeen, by Conall’s first reckoning, of whom nine had been definitely involved in the murder plot, five of them wounded. Of the remaining eight, Saer was able to identify two more as having borne arms during the fray—leaving six of undetermined status, whose guilt or innocence would have to be winnowed out by more elegant methods.
As Nigel’s men disarmed and bound the prisoners, clearing the hall of all unnecessary personnel as surgeons arrived to tend the wounded, Bishop Arilan also slipped into the hall, anonymously clad in the plain black working cassock of an ordinary priest. To forestall trickery by any unknown Deryni among the prisoners, he produced a jar of ointment similar to what he had used on Nigel, not many weeks before—though it was the human Saer de Traherne who, at Arilan’s quick direction, passed among the prisoners and dosed each with a smear of the drug at the base of the throat.
“It contains merasha,” the Deryni bishop told Nigel, as Richenda trailed after Saer to observe their subjects’ reactions. “Not a very large dose, but enough to disrupt Deryni functions just enough that even a trained one won’t be able to feign the proper responses to Truth-Reading. For the humans among them, it will only make them a little drowsy.”
“I should have thought of that,” Nigel murmured, nodding his understanding. “What happens next, then? I suppose we interrogate them all?”
“Not a pleasant prospect, but it has to be done,” Arilan replied. “You needn’t take part unless you really want to. Richenda has offered to front the procedure, in case anyone feels compelled to talk about the fact that Deryni—ah—‘persuasion’ is being used. And I’ll help out. They won’t know who I am. The innocent ones can be culled quite quickly, and the humans among the guilty won’t be difficult. Would you rather just observe?”
“No, this is just another facet of what I’ve seen Kelson do many times,” Nigel murmured, though his voice betrayed a slight edge of nervousness. “I need as much firsthand information as I can get, if I’m to deal with this properly. No sense having the responsibility of what I’ve been given if I can’t enjoy some of the benefits, is there? Do you suppose Jehana would like to observe?”
As he flicked a wry glance toward the doorway where Jehana had been watching surreptitiously for the past few minutes, she ducked out of sight. Richenda had heard the end of their exchange, returning with Saer from her inspection of the prisoners, and smiled wanly.
“Shame on you, Nigel. You know she isn’t ready for that yet. It could be quite interesting, however. Several of our prisoners are showing distinct signs of disorientation.”
“Just what we need at Rhemuth,” Nigel said with a snort. “More Deryni. Ah, well. Conall, I’ll ask you to secure the hall. No one in or out without my knowledge.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Saer, we’ll need the prisoners brought in one at a time.”
“Aye.”
As son and brother-in-law went to do his bidding, Nigel added, “I only wish Kelson were here. And Morgan and Duncan.”
Duncan, meanwhile, would have been glad to be almost anywhere besides where he was. As battle raged around him, more and more of his men falling to Mearan swords, and Loris’ white-clad death squad worked its way inexorably closer, the fatality of his error became more and more apparent. With luck, the bulk of his Cassani army might escape to fight another day, but he would not. Nor would his death even help the king. Sicard’s army was far, far larger than they had been led to believe—and Kelson might never know until it was too late.
A battleaxe came whistling toward his head, and he managed to turn it aside, sword to haft, but the shock reverberating down his arm nearly unseated him from a saddle that was already slick with the blood of the horse slowly dying beneath him. One of his men finished off the man with the axe while Duncan recovered, but the horse was not going to recover. A McLain man drew alongside so that Duncan could lurch across to mount double behind him, but the situation was worsening by the minute. He sensed Dhugal’s alarm across the sea of combatants, momentarily panicked at not seeing Duncan astride the familiar grey anymore, but there was nothing Dhugal could do for him—though Duncan did raise his sword so that Dhugal could see that he was still alive.
But though it might be too late for Dhugal to do anything for him, perhaps it was not yet too late for Duncan to buy a last chance for Dhugal—and if Dhugal somehow managed to escape, perhaps he could get a warning through to Kelson. It would involve a desperate gamble, and would surely seal his own fate if he were taken instead of perishing on the field of battle, but at least Duncan would not have spent his life in vain.
He had never used his powers to kill, and he could not bring himself to do so now, but he had no qualms about using them to create the necessary diversion—and Dhugal would not obey him without the impetus of what Duncan was planning.
The man in front of him took a fatal blow meant for him, and carried Duncan with him as he toppled from the saddle, but Duncan spared him little thought as he scrambled to his feet, sword still in hand, and centered all his concentration for one last, desperate gamble. What he planned would deplete him greatly; but he was not riding out of Dorna anyway, so it hardly mattered—so long as Dhugal escaped and could warn Kelson.
He whoofed as a horse shouldered him into another, nearly knocking him down, but it was one of his own men. Grabbing onto the stirrup, he let the horse shield him as its rider wheeled, lifting him away from another attacker. And drawing deep breath, he braced himself and set his call.
Dhugal, leave NOW and ride for Kelson! he sent across the din of battle, driving the order ruthlessly into his son’s mind. Do whatever you have to do, but GO! You can’t save me.
At the same time, he set another magic in force, raising the image of a wall of fire roaring in the midst of the men between himself and Dhugal, ostensibly driving toward the astonished and horrified Loris and his death squad, but also cutting Dhugal off from even trying to rejoin him—or Loris’ men from preventing Dhugal’s escape.
He could not hold it long, but he hoped it would be long enough. It died as the attackers closest to him recovered their composure and closed on him with renewed vigor, Loris screaming imprecations and almost frothing at the mouth.
“It’s only a Deryni trick!” he heard Gorony roar. “Take him! He can’t hold it if you press him!”
And press him they did. He could not see whether Dhugal was obeying him, but he renewed his physical fighting with all the strength he could muster, laying about him with his sword, inflicting as much damage as he could. They might, indeed, take him, but he would make them pay dearly for him. Perhaps they would even kill him. Better that, than to be taken by Gorony and Loris, though he could not deliberately seek his death.
Apparently they were not going to oblige him, however. They had him spotted now. He lost his shielding horseman, though he quickly fell in with two McLain men on foot and they tried to fight as a unit. Several times, when one of the attackers pressing closest to him could have killed him—and Duncan killed one of them without a second thought?
??they did not close for that fatal blow, though they killed one of his McLains. They had their orders to try to take him alive; he could read it in their eyes.
Finally someone dealt him a ringing blow to the back of his helm, and a shield slammed into his back. They tripped him as he staggered, and more swarmed in to pummel at his helm and set his ears to ringing. The chinstrap of his helmet gave, and a sword hilt smacked him above one ear as the helm came off.
As his vision began to grey at the edges, and he felt them wrenching the sword from nerveless fingers, someone hit him again at the base of the skull, very precisely. Pain exploded behind his eyes and then along every nerve ending of his body, just before the blackness swooped in on him. Then there was nothing.
Dhugal was already making the most of the opportunity Duncan had bought him so dearly, when he felt the last of the link with his father dissolve. He had reeled under the force of the order Duncan sent, both from its sheer strength and the action it required, but there was no question of disobeying. As the Mearans closest to him faltered, momentarily panicked by the fire suddenly roaring in their midst, he jerked his horse’s head around to bolt through an opening their indecision had created, half a dozen of his clansmen at his heels. He would not let himself think about what his father’s sudden silence meant, though he refused to believe that Duncan was dead.
Nor was there time to explain what he must do, to the few men who managed to stay with him as he fled. Ciard looked at him as if he were crazy when he frantically led them away from the Cassani banner, and the three others surely thought him a coward for running away, leaving their commander to be killed or taken. Until his dying day—which would be soon, if he could not pull this off—he would remember the look of disgust on old Lambert’s face when, as he rode, he wrenched off his helm, with its telltale earl’s coronet, and cast it away, shouting at them to follow.
They followed, though, flanking him and covering his rear, he and the four of them cutting a grim swath as they raced south and west, away from the heat of battle. They followed, but Dhugal knew he would be a long time regaining their respect—if he ever did.