They raked the hostile hills and splashed through the grabbing reeds of the bogs that spread like virid stains along the bottomlands. At nightfall, most foray teams returned empty-handed, unblooded, chilled to the bone, and disheartened.
Others suffered a lightning-swift attack, played through and finished before they could fight back. Their fallen died unavenged as they seethed in grim circles that netted them no target to strike back.
For each paltry triumph garnered by the headhunters’ tactics, shadows and sorceries claimed their ongoing toll. No matter how well-disciplined, the outlying skirmish lines became swallowed at random by unnatural dark. Arrows killed them. As often, the inbound supply trains straggled off their known route, bewildered and misled by illusion. Patrols later found them, bogged down in mud, or wandering lost, parted from their livestock and wagons.
The sorry truth persisted as the cook tents thinned their gruel and shortened rations. Through a fortnight of blood and sweat and selfless effort, the manhunt launched after the Master of Shadow gained Lysaer no measurable results. By small nips and bites, his ranks were whittled by losses.
Lord Commander Harradene of Etarra became a familiar sight, splashing from the puddled muck of the picket lines in his oversize boots and a cerecloth cloak which flapped off his broad shoulders like the hunchbacked plumage of a vulture. He was at hand to quell the upset when a pike rack beset by iyats brought a tent down in tatters, then sent the contents of the armourer’s tool chest kiting through the high bracken, mallets and nails tumbling and tangling ahead of the men who raced to snatch them.
‘Your Grace, such misfortunes won’t let up,’ Lord Harradene importuned once the last errant tool had been netted in chain mail, and four shelterless men crouched on their hams in the rain, stitching up rents in soaked canvas. ‘Any time troops suffer sour spirits, their angst will lure in the stray fiends. In this benighted country, Ath’s adepts keep no hostels to drive the accursed creatures off. We could send to the Koriani hospice at Forthmark for talismans. But if our couriers drive their remounts any harder, they’re going to break legs in the bogs. Another fortnight will pass before word of our need gets through.’
Lysaer was seated on a camp stool sharpening a dagger. His hair beaded silver with wet, and his blue-and-gold surcoat a cry of unnatural colour against the unremitting gloom of wet hillsides, he looked up at the towering officer given rank as Lord Diegan’s successor. ‘You know such vexations are precisely how our enemy hopes to weaken us.’ His mildness a mask over iron determination, he added, ‘A whole lot worse than iyats will plague the five kingdoms if the Master of Shadow escapes alive.’
Lord Commander Harradene gave back no comment.
The Prince of the West laid aside whetstone and knife. He arose, snapped his fingers to his page, and received the cloak with Tysan’s star over his shoulders. Then he waited, silent also, until the burly man of war who balked with folded arms could no longer sustain his level gaze.
‘Are you suggesting Etarra should withdraw?’ asked Prince Lysaer.
Flushed red by the implication that the allies from Jaelot and Alestron were more staunch, Lord Harradene gave way. ‘Persistence is a credit, but it cannot stay the weather, nor lift the gloom of defeat off the troops. The hunger they suffer isn’t helping. If this campaign’s to win us aught but despair, our quarry had best be drawn and cornered quickly.’
‘See to your men and he shall be,’ Lysaer pledged.
An approaching jingle of steel, a man’s bitten laugh, then the squelch of a fast stride through mud heralded the courier with the report from Skannt’s last patrol. ‘Mount a foray team,’ the headhunter called, wringing out his cloak. ‘We’ve seen more circles of flattened grass left by tents, and three pits of warm coals. Tracking dogs are out. There were tribesfolk watering a flock by a spring. By the sheep slots in the muck, they just barely departed.’
‘The men who take them get the mutton,’ Lysaer promised on a smile as Harradene’s gruff mood brightened to immediate enthusiasm. With the latest supply train three days overdue, the contest would spur chafing troops.
In the dank flood of puddles, under misted wind and drizzle, the teams saddled horses and rode out in high heart.
Although the lure of fresh meat spitting hot fat over their fires held the men to the trail through weary hours, the herders vanished into the crags, untraceable. Skannt’s tracking hounds circled and sniffed for scent on rinsed gravel until their pads bled. Squads of riders charged up and down the foggy glens, lured on by the echoed barking of herd dogs, or the chance-caught glimpse of sheep filing through a break in the mists. They would arrive in sweating fury to find the site vacant. Whatever notched pass had let the herders slip by, the most diligent scouts found their war bands no path through the scarps to give chase.
‘Sorcery,’ some of them muttered as they gave winded horses rein to breathe. ‘The stones themselves could be witched.’
Others argued over which routes were safe. The slides at Dier Kenton had undermined their trust in the steep-sided corries. The grain of high ledges rose grooved in wet like sheared lead, their walls etched in guano from eyries of wyvern, and their weed-choked, ruffled brown gulches gouged out by the scars of old rockfalls. Men took fair warning from the runes scraped by shepherds to mark where the ground was unstable.
The more suspicious captains complained the placement was deliberate strategy. ‘What are such signs if not decoys to divert us? Pay too close attention, and we’ll ruin good mounts in the sinkholes or break our necks climbing boulders in the gullies.’
On one point, weary men agreed in creeping, hoarse whispers behind their officers’ backs: Vastmark was a fiend’s place, and the Shadow Master a genius in choosing the battleground upon which to break their hearts and spirits.
That night, past firepits clogged with soggy ashes that had signally failed to roast any haunch of captured mutton, a rattling pound of hooves raised trail-weary men from their tents. The cry of Alestron from the sentries and the blazon worn by the outriders raised a swift flurry of expectations. But no wagons of supplies were forthcoming. Instead, a company of fifty lancers on sweat-lathered horses pounded into camp under the ducal banner.
A splendid figure in his scarlet-and-gold surcoat, Lord Bransian s’Brydion vaulted from his saddle in a singing clash of war gear. He tossed his reins to a skin-wet royal squire and called in his boisterous bass, ‘I’ve come to speak with Prince Lysaer.’
A thin-faced equerry in Avenor’s blue livery stepped out with a smoking torch. ‘His Grace is in council with the division captains.’
Duke Bransian ripped off his gauntlets, shedding wet in a pattering deluge to add to what drizzled from the sky. ‘Which tent?’ At the servant’s fractional hesitation, he resumed in a blast of irritation, ‘I don’t give a damn if your liege is stark naked in his bath with six mistresses! I didn’t ride forty leagues over Ath-forsaken gulches to stand in a downpour, waiting.’
‘I’ll take you,’ offered one of the sentries on guard before the drapes of the royal pavilion.
Bransian grunted, then barked for his troop captain to stay at his side. ‘The rest of you, commandeer a space and pitch camp. I’ll join you when I’ve had my audience.’ He followed the royal guardsman to what looked like a supply tent, then burst through its sagging entry without pause for a servant to announce him.
The ongoing murmur of voices inside wavered into sharp silence. Lysaer s’Ilessid looked up where he stood at the centre of a torchlit trestle. His arms were braced on a tactical map, his pale hair and circlet a patch of brightness gouged gleaming out of the shadows. He was attended by his ranking senior officers, clad in splotched mail, or surcoats still mud-spattered from the field. The tallest and most imposing of these was Alestron’s own commander of mercenaries.
Aware of whose presence loomed at the entry, that one straightened up from close council. ‘My lord!’
‘Duke Bransian s’Brydion, accept my welcome,’ greeted the Prince o
f the West. ‘You have my condolence. By your arrival, I presume you received my letter concerning your brother, Keldmar?’
The royal candour caused the mercenary who knew the duke to cringe.
Bransian strode nearer, the clink of his spurs marking time to a tautened span of stillness. ‘A scribbled word of sympathy would scarcely draw me here. And your sentiment’s wasted.’ He ripped off his mail coif. As though the steel were featherweight, he tossed it in a jingling arc. The captain who trailed at his shoulder fielded the catch with long-suffering familiarity. Over the sour clash of links, the duke added, ‘I came because of this!’
He raked a crumpled square of parchment from his breast, impaled it on his unsheathed dagger, then hurled the weapon across the crowded tent.
The yellowed page fluttered, impelled by its missile of angry steel. The men-of-war nearest the trestle jostled clear, while the blade impaled with a choked-off clang through the centre of the flattened map.
‘Go on, read,’ Bransian snapped, while the pins and counters representing men tumbled in rattling disarray. The ducal face flushed over the wet pelt of his beard. ‘Your men want to know why their supply train is late? You can tell them that murdering bastard of Shadow has trapped my three brothers as his hostage.’
Lysaer slit the parchment down its length rather than work the dagger free. His eyes, hard blue, scanned down lines of bold writing that strung him to rage of his own. ‘… the well-being of your brothers now held as forfeit. If you wish them to live, you will cut the supply lines across Shand that sustain the great warhost in Vastmark.’
Over the outraged, incredulous murmur of the gathered senior officers, Bransian shouted, ‘By my very name and lineage, the insult to s’Brydion is one I’ll not suffer to bear!’
His fury clashed with Lysaer’s tempered calm like the testing tap of crossed sword blades. ‘Are you telling me eleven thousand dedicated men will be abandoned to hunger because of a threat to three lives?’ The prince yanked the knife from the map, while the upright markers which outlined proposed patrols scattered in ironic retreat. ‘You know if you give way to this, our last chance of victory will be ruined.’
Every man in camp knew the politics: the s’Brydion clan name was all that held the Selkwood barbarians from plundering every wagon to cross the wilds of Shand.
Bransian’s eyes glittered like sheared iron as he shouldered his way to the trestle. ‘You bear the blood of Tysan’s caithdein on your hands, an affront no clanborn dares forgive. If your enemy is my enemy, that’s no binding tie. The lives you would sacrifice are my brothers’!’ The parked bulk of his frame set torches and candles into flickering eclipse. Amid the lick of wild shadows, his stance seemed as rock, implacable before royal sovereignty. ‘Did you forget? Half of your vaunted eleven thousand are my own. How dare you presume my close family is worth less than the neck of one shadow-bending fugitive!’
Lysaer faced that lion’s burst of temper in outright, scornful censure. ‘For Maenalle’s just arraignment for execution, I owe no living man apology. And while I share sympathy for the plight of your kinsmen, to measure their lives against the death of the Shadow Master is a mistake that could threaten us all.’
His hands locked to the dagger and parchment in restraint, Lysaer gave Bransian’s hard-breathing ire no space at all to reply. This Teir’s’Ffalenn’s end is worth any cost, as your mercenaries here have stood witness. Even hungry, even abandoned by their lord, they will stay.’ He finished in passionate entreaty to hook even the most grieving heart. ‘Our effort must not fail here. Innocents rely on our protection to bring this fell sorcerer down.’
‘Oh, he’ll die for his effrontery, never fear.’ Bransian held out his huge hand, received back his knife, snapped it home in the sheath at his wrist. ‘I’ll kill the slinking spy myself, not only for Alestron, but to see my brothers safe. Yet before my arrow or my steel takes his life, or until Mearn, Keldmar and Parrien are won free of his hands, no more of your supply wagons will have my escort across Vastmark. No troops from Alestron will march alongside your banner.’
‘Add to our cause, or weaken us all,’ Lysaer warned.
Bransian spat. ‘I’ll take back our field troops and plough apart these mountains. What you’ve failed to accomplish with a warhost, I shall finish alone with Keldmar’s remaining six thousand.’
‘Then issue your orders,’ Lysaer flung back in brittle challenge. ‘See if your fool’s cause can draw them to abandon my side.’
‘His Grace is right,’ ventured the mercenary captain in rooted, unnerving conviction. ‘My lord, even for Keldmar, we cannot agree to desert.’
‘Desert?’ Bransian bristled. ‘What cant is this? Fiends plague! It’s my treasury serves up your pay. Our people never joined this campaign for the pretty scruples! Take care how you speak. The one you pay lip service with royal title is no prince to command the fealty of any man born in Melhalla!’
The captain held ground in granite calm. ‘You were not here for the murder of twenty-eight thousand, nor did you see your own seasoned troops undone by illusion and sorcery. The Prince of the West sees a danger in this Shadow Master that runs beyond blood ties or kingdoms. His gift of light is promised to guard us. Any troop riding against this enemy without protection is begging a foolhardy end.’
‘Sithaer! You speak of the rockslide that mauled Dier Kenton Vale?’ The tawny spikes of Bransian’s moustache lifted into a sneer. ‘Everyone knows this countryside’s unstable. Your prince’s warhost died of plain tactics. Any cornered fugitive would’ve chosen faulty ground to save his skin when a mass of armed might fit to flatten a whole kingdom came trampling in to seek his death.’
‘Nonetheless,’ the captain insisted, ‘Avenor’s gold replaced our lost arms. We stand as the prince’s men now.’
‘Starve with him then, for his morals.’ Bransian poised, eyes glittering, and regarded the Prince of the West, who had not moved. Eye-to-eye, the pair faced off, Alestron’s duke furious, and Lysaer, detached in regal sadness.
‘I see nothing I say will convince you.’ Magnanimous, Lysaer creased the ripped parchment. To a sparkle of rings, he laid Arithon’s missive across the rucked map on the trestle. ‘Go in grace, my lord duke. Your brothers have my prayers for safe deliverance.’
A laugh ripped from Bransian’s throat. ‘Don’t trouble the creator over them. I can kill an enemy and spare my born kin without any plea to Ath’s grace for assistance.’
His captain of horse still hard at his heels, he stamped outside, immersed in rapid-fire orders. ‘Tell my escort, and any of our mercenaries who might listen, to pack up now and resaddle. We’ve better things to do than to bed down with ninnies who breathe righteous principle and snivel in shrinking fear of shadows!’
The noise and the shouting disrupted half the night, as the Duke of Alestron gathered up his banners and his men and clattered into the darkness. At the end, some four hundred of Keldmar’s command broke away and rode with him. The cavalcade was lost from view before dawn, swallowed up by the mists and the drab rains of Vastmark as if they had never existed.
In Lysaer’s command tent, by the dribbled stubs of stale candles, the prince’s scribe folded and sealed the last of a thick stack of dispatches. While the scent of hot wax curled through the reek of mouldered leather and the martial tang of oil and filed steel, the courier held waiting to ride scraped his stubbled chin with the back of a gloved knuckle. ‘Do you think any of those deserters will survive?’
Exhausted, immersed in deep thought, Lysaer speared his quill pen into the throat of the inkwell. ‘They’re not deserters.’ Regret weighed his shoulders beneath the trim tabard, with its gold bordered edges and the embroidered star of Tysan tarnished a bit green from the damp. ‘Any foe of Arithon’s is our firm ally. Let no man dare make the claim that Duke Bransian didn’t ride out with my blessing.’
‘You don’t fault him for abandoning help with the supply train?’ asked the guard by the door flap. He took liberty for the
fact this prince never disparaged lowly rank, but would indulge his curiosity with clear answer.
Lysaer smiled as though the sun had come out and tapped the sealed pile of dispatches. ‘I’ve inherited some five thousand of Alestron’s best mercenaries. Duke Bransian may have withdrawn his family banner. We’ll just have to see that Erlien’s barbarians don’t hear the same men are now taking pay from my coffers.’
To the courier’s stifled awe, the prince laughed outright, a balm after hours of stiff protocol as officers came and left with terse orders. ‘I’m assigning the mercenaries to resecure our supply lines from the coast,’ Lysaer affirmed in that logic which could banish raw fear. ‘What did you all think? That I’d stand down and leave because one old blood duke threw a tantrum? No. That would be a tawdry epitaph for the brave men who died, and small excuse to others who rely on us.’
Under the mists, as electrum veils of drizzle gave way to a colder, heavier thrum of rain, the Vastmark valleys crawled with armed men. For the shepherds under Ari-thon’s protection, despite the hard-fought illusion of success, patrols were getting harder to avoid. Sheep and non-combatant families with young children were suffering under the strain. They slept in coiled nerves for the breathless word brought by scouts in the deeps of the night, then the hasty, rushed moves under cover of darkness, with babes muffled silent, and dogs nipping the skittish heels of panicked sheep.
In an open ditch choked with gorse, Dakar swiped dripping hair from his eyes and numbered the aches of exhaustion. The unscrupulous urge became plaguing temptation, to abandon the tenets of the Law of the Major Balance. How he itched to conjure a forbidden set of seals, draw the separate parties of enemy scouts to mistake each other for Arithon’s archers, and let them noisily demolish each other. Certainly if he had to spend another day seeking permissions of sheep to seal illusions to make them look like rocks; or the same for rocks, to make them wear the semblance of sheep, he would beg for a mad fit of prescience just to escape his miserable boredom.