Recoils
Early Spring 5653
Infuriated that their quarry escaped them at Riverton, the Etarran officers hold an argumentative council to salve the pride of their chafing troops by sending them reiving after the forest clansmen who might lend the fugitive Shadow Master shelter; while they deliberate, the Hanshireman, Sulfin Evend, requisitions forty men on fast horses and leaves the gates under Koriani orders to pursue Arithon’s trail with sharp fervor…
Upcoast, at Avenor, the crown council of Tysan releases formal public announcement of Princess Talith’s fatal plunge from a high tower battlement; and the verdict delivered to the shocked and mourning court names her death as a suicide brought on by despair and a tragic inability to conceive her fair husband an heir…
On the third day, the Koriani healer reports to First Senior Lirenda concerning her charge’s condition. “Caolle will be well enough to move, and can sail with the hostages if he’s given a secure berth. His wrists cannot be set into irons, as you hoped. It’s a paltry enough setback, but the gashes on his forearms for some reason seem to have festered…”
IX. Setback
Early Spring 5653
Night lidded the sky over Korias Flats like a bowl of thick cobalt glass. Yesterday’s bleak weather had blown away south, chivvied out by a cutting north breeze that moaned over the barren lowland terrain with its swept slabs of calcine granite. Stands of witch hazel and thorn, and the storm-trimmed fronds of bent willows rustled and tossed in the gullies, twigs dusted in the faint light of a waning crescent. North of the river course, where ancient glaciers had plowed up a shoal of dry ground, the land fell away in a gradual slope that eventually cradled the steaming, dank pools of Mogg’s Fen. That way, alone, fared a lean rider nursing a trail-blown horse.
The traveler knew his purposeful way in the wilds. He tracked steadily north, the polestar lending him guidance. His mount went shod, but no chance grate of steel rang upon unclothed granite. Sparing of the animal’s last strength, he moved where he could up the throat of the gullies, and avoided the scoured brush on the rims.
Despite his most diligent care and sly knowledge to foil observation, his stumbling, spent gelding could not pass entirely without noise. Mearn s’Brydion reined back in nettled annoyance as four men with drawn steel stepped out of the thicket in his path.
Their challenge was alert and crisply professional. The nasal ring to their speech identified them as the elite muster Prince Lysaer had marched from Etarra.
Against fitful shadow and the mottled ink patterns of bare thorn and hazel, Mearn made them out, clad in mail dimmed with soot to damp the chance gleam of the moonlight. Each one was outfitted with horn, bow, and steel, unafraid to meet trouble with force. Their carriage reflected a centered, light balance, decidedly more lethal than their garrison-trained countrymen who wore the sunwheel blazon at Riverton.
Caught without knowledge of the password they demanded, Mearn refused answer until their advance had brought them inside one stride of him. The hand under his mantle rested taut on his knife. He kept his spurs ready to wheel his spent mount into immediate, hard flight, for no saving grace could lift the hair-trigger potential for disaster. These were townbred veterans with hard-core disaffections. Here in the free wilds, where clan accent alone could provoke a bloodletting misunderstanding, Mearn had no wish to claim the protection of Prince Lysaer’s Alliance with his family. A s’Brydion presence abroad with credentials, but no escort, would raise all the wrong sort of questions.
“Who passes?” the sentry repeated. “Say your name and your purpose!”
Mearn let his dragging exhaustion sap the lilt of clan origins from his tone. “Courier, northbound.”
Then more crawling chills flicked the length of his spine. The whispered rustle of branches from behind gave warning as more men closed at his back. His straits were now unequivocal. He rode alone, with no lawful witness within miles to gainsay the right actions of men who held him surrounded with drawn steel.
The next query carried a cold snap of suspicion. “What brings you here? Your path takes you far from the public road.”
Mearn kept his birth dialect blurred, and his hands light and taut on his weapon. “Alliance business.” To his right, where the gulch held pooled water, the chorus of spring peepers had silenced. These men would have concealed archers placed there, backing them up against mishap.
Ready to wheel his horse’s startled weight and ram the two swordsmen behind him, Mearn measured his odds. If the bowmen had poor eyesight and miserable aim, he might narrowly manage to beat an escape through the brush. Very likely he would be wounded. Any lead he might gain could last only as long as some headhunter thought to set dogs on him. Without knowing the size of the camp these men guarded, dissembling stayed his best option. Mearn assayed an impatient, townborn inflection. “I have northbound dispatches. Very urgent.”
The Etarran officer was steady enough not to kill out of hand. Scarcely a day’s march away from the river, he must know an overt barbarian presence was unlikely in the middle of wide-open country. Mearn waited, unbreathing, to see whether sweet luck or mischance was going to present his next opening.
The duty officer called for a torch. “Let’s have a look.”
Flint and steel were produced with no fumbling. One of the sentries had rags soaked in pitch already prepared and waiting. As the flame burst and flowered, carnelian light played over Mearn’s leather-clad knee, then the sable and scarlet colors of the officer’s cloak he had purloined from the gatehouse that morning. Behind the folds of his mud-spattered hem, his gelding still wore the matching saddlecloth with its Hanshire blazon, that he had forgotten he carried.
The Etarrans fixed on the city mayor’s device, and troubled to look no farther.
“Dharkaron’s bollocks!” somebody carped from the sidelines. “Not another of you louses! Gave up my bed to your kind last night. The peacock disdained to fold up his blankets, far less say thanks in gratitude. Treated everyone he met like the get of a bootlicking scullion.”
“Be still, you!” Defined in the light by the braid on his surcoat, the authority proved a man of middle years, rangy and fit and intolerant of nonsense. To Mearn, he made swift disposition. “All right, sir. You need not prove out the unpleasant reputation your countrymen left with my troops. You pass. Then you speak to the captain on watch. If your needs can be met, he’ll look after the arrangements.”
Mearn masked a thrill of delighted inspiration behind faintly sneering reserve. Weary, hungry, and hagridden by the urgency to move on, nonetheless, the gambler in him refused to ignore the dubious gifts dame fortune cast in his lap. He tipped a superior nod to the sergeant. Then he gathered his reins, risen to an arrogance no less withering than the Hanshire aristocrat who preceded him.
“Fiends plague!” a plaintive voice announced in oversight. “He’ll need tonight’s password if he isn’t to find himself skewered on the swords of the inner watch.”
Mearn pulled the gelding up short, his expression sure prelude to a burst of reviling temper.
The sergeant grumbled his unembarrassed apology and shared the prearranged signal. Mearn inclined his head, touched firm heels to his horse, and passed by, girded to wring what advantage he could, starting with a hot meal.
Behind him, the disaffected patrol indulged their dismal opinion of Hanshiremen. “Not a trustworthy lot, never have been. Hate royalty like plague. The fish-eaters consort with witches and soothsayers, as well as abet Koriani. You knew their Lord Mayor’s high council is said to dabble in black magic?”
“Stow the loose chatter!” snapped the sergeant.
His chastened men broke up to resume their lapsed posts, while Mearn moved on out of earshot, In apparent routine, he let his exhausted mount pick its own way through the rim-lit gulches and low brush. The farther he progressed, the more fresh unease chafed at his overtaxed nerves. Again, he surveyed the plain. The shaved moon textured a panorama like etched lead. He detected no sig
n of a camp. Only a storm-raked wrack of bent trees that marked the dry confluence of a watershed. The hollow he crossed was scarcely a notable landmark in the lowland face of the Flats. He heard no human sound. Just the rustle of a fox, and the endless sough of the wind through the budding twigs of bare branches. Whatever business an armed camp had here, these Etarrans knew enough to use even this barren terrain to advantage.
Mearn slowed the gelding, sobered by an ingrained campaign wisdom to revise his original estimate. Given two lines of sentries, and no discernible activity, cold instinct lifted his hackles. An armed presence that maintained such secrecy would not be inept, or unleashed for any other Alliance agenda than the harrying of Tysan’s free clansmen.
Made aware like a douse into ice water that his danger was far greater than he realized, Mearn combed the shadows more closely. He saw nothing still. His palms sprang a cold sweat and his warning instinct changed from mild to rousingly urgent. A covert retreat now carried more than chance risk in this country, where a mouse could not cross these stands of dry brush without telltale rustles of sound.
Mearn weighed a dangerously cruel set of choices. Best odds of survival were to bleed the horse dead, then try and creep back past the alert ring of sentries he had just hoodwinked to protect his identity. If he slipped through unseen, he would then be on foot, easy prey for the tracking dogs dispatched to run him to earth. Hot pursuit would inevitably close at his heels. A horse carcass would draw notice, perhaps even before the watch reported his presence at the next routine change of the guard.
He could trade his anonymity for short-term escape, or he could play for high odds and act out his guise as a bullying blue-blooded Hanshireman.
Had the stakes been less grim, Mearn could have laughed for the damnfool straits of his predicament. By that hour, he had been moving at speed through rough country for the better part of five days. His rest had been snatched between showers in the thorn brakes; his last meal, a chunk of sour cheese bought from a farmwife out feeding her geese. His judgment was failing, each separate thought strained as though drawn through a pall of black silk. Had he not been about to nod off in the saddle, he might have bypassed the first pack of sentries altogether.
Mearn stroked the neck of his flagging mount. To reward the poor gelding for trusting service with the furtive thrust of a knife seemed the ungrateful act of a coward.
An insatiable gambler, Mearn let the rash heat in his blood call his fate. Since trained soldiers were likely to dog his path anyway, he might as well snatch the bold opportunity to gain provisions and a fresh horse.
“Oats and a rubdown for you then, old man,” he whispered in wisecrack resolve. His bluff would carry more thrill for wild stakes, never mind the maniacal temptation to gripe the Etarrans in the most evil manner he could. He pressed the gelding’s scrambling, tired gait, swearing as noisily as any Hanshire townsman whose urgent orders sent him across an inhospitable wilderness.
The inner ring of sentries came at him like sharks in their haste to issue their challenge. Through snapping sticks as the horse fought bad footing, Mearn gave the password in the sloppy, soft vowels that centuries of affected fashion had evolved into citybred speech.
“State your business,” the guard demanded, unsatisfied.
“Courier,” barked Mearn. “You can’t see with the two eyes Ath put in your face?” He added a phrase in the west coastal dialect that would raise a ripe flush on a galleyman.
“From Hanshire?” The flustered guard jerked up his chin, then snapped for a henchman to unshutter the light.
Slit eyed in the blinding flare of a lantern, Mearn gave his obstreperous opinion. “Fiends plague! You Etarrans always check on the obvious with the plodding stupidity of fed ticks.”
Three guards slapped swift hands to their weapons, insulted. No fool, the young officer waved the arrival on quickly. He could do little else without risking a brawl unlikely to stop short of bloodshed.
Mearn smiled like a fox and rode past.
A bowshot ahead, he encountered the camp, a row of dark tents hunkered into a hollow carved out of the stony debris of a floodplain. The site lay well masked, set into the willows that knitted the low ground in the flats. The shelters were invisible unless an observer all but stumbled into their midst. Mearn saw no loose ends, no telltale gleams of chance firelight. The fitful, hard gusts did not slap at slack canvas, nor did stray talk ride the breeze.
This field troop displayed deadly, meticulous care. In sheer size alone, their presence bespoke a planned devastation, the work of trained reivers moving fast into enemy territory. Mearn disliked the unpleasant bent of his hunches, that Lord Maenol’s clan scouts were going to receive a grim retaliation for upsetting the late march into Riverton. Nor did informed hindsight applaud the decision to beard the wolf pack in its chosen lair. This strike force was seasoned by the wiles of headhunters, and likely as fast to take scalps without question if they caught wind of an infiltrator inside their camp.
Though contentious escapades were Mearn’s personal specialty, the banner which flew above the command tent made him wonder if even his brazen wit could pull off a challenge this grand. For the field captain in charge here had served the s’Brydion family as a mercenary until the campaign at Vastmark had brought an abrupt change of patron. The duke’s brothers were far more than passing acquaintances, and Mearn’s false claim of identity as a Hanshire courier would be seen as a killing offense.
A stick snapped on his back trail. Mearn spun, saw the two-legged shadow that stalked him, and snarled a silent obscenity. His presence had apparently stirred enough doubt that a guardsman had been sent to tail him. Most likely the creature was instructed to make sure he reported straightaway to the acting officer of the watch.
Hazed to a spurt of riled temper for this latest unlucky setback, Mearn drew a deep breath, then turned to engage every twist of cunning wickedness he could raise to secure his stake in survival.
“If you’re going to follow,” he drawled in contempt, “might just as well do so up front, where you won’t take the point of my knife in mistaken belief you had thieving eyes on my purse.”
The stick-cracking rustles hitched through a pause, then resumed as a stocky, perturbed soldier elbowed his way through the prickles of a hazel copse. Despite his large build, he moved well. His balance reflected a swordsman’s neat tread, and though self-controlled, his temperament was by no means phlegmatic enough to withstand the barrage of Mearn’s baiting. If he dared not strike back at a Hanshire courier, he would settle for shedding an unwanted responsibility as fast as humanly possible. “Head groom’s still awake. He’ll care for your horse.”
“I’ll care for my horse,” Mearn shot back in distemper. He dismounted and loosened his saddle girth, running on in snide language under his breath about the ineptness of rattle-pated grooms. For sheer, stinging mischief, he added an insolent phrase in dialect he picked up by the Riverton gates, when the officer whose mantle he filched had swept in.
“Fatemaster’s bollocks!” The stout guardsmen peered past the sloped neck of the gelding. “Is every living one of you also related to the priggish family of the mayor?”
Mearn smiled, sly in malice as a weasel. “Thick witted, are you, to take so long to notice the connection.”
The pair crossed inside the camp perimeter, the alleged Hanshire courier all peevish-sharp nerves, and the heavyset soldier tagging his heels in contrasting, subservient awkwardness.
No torches burned, even damped behind canvas. Those men who had not turned in for the night hunkered down in small groups, conversation held to low whispers. They blended into the pitch shapes of the shadow, faces and hands stained with walnut dye to mask the pallor of bare flesh. Their shelters were sturdy and weatherproof, showing the odd scuffs and mends of hard use, and a layout taken from a headhunters’ practice, with tents placed in rows of predictable width to allow ease of movement in darkness. Mearn lightened his tread, made cautious by the lethal stamp of competenc
e reflected in every salient detail.
This camp was laid out for instantaneous action, from swift relocation to surprise attack. Men called to arms from the deepest of sleep could move, fight, and organize without tripping over tent pegs and ropes. No clutter lay about, no stray gear or strings of washed clothing. At a table with camp seats placed near the center, three wakeful officers clustered in conference, a tight-shuttered lantern between them. Yet no gleam of flame gave their presence away in the faint, mottled fall of the moonlight.
Led into their presence, Mearn used the snagged hair of the gelding’s mane to obscure direct view of his face. His posture stayed straight, every inch of him arrogant. At length the camp watch captain broke off discussion and issued a testy inquiry. “Don’t stand there dumbfounded! If you have any purpose here, state it.”
Since the uppity Hanshireman deigned not to speak, his disgruntled escort was forced to step up and explain. “Here’s a courier, bound north bearing urgent dispatches.”
A drawn pause; the watch captain waited, braced on mailed elbows. His expectation made the silence unbearable. Red-faced, the sentry resumed his report, unable to refute the implied chain of command. “Yes, he needs food. Care and grain for his horse.”
Mearn forced his breath steady as the lamp was raised up, and a cautious, brief finger of light flickered over his cloak and the Hanshire blazon on his saddlecloth.
Blunt as the mace he wore at his belt, the watch captain pressed his gruff inquiry. “You know him?”
“Sithaer no! Thank the power of Light for that blessing.” The soldier glared with pure rancor at Mearn, who gave back a smile full of teeth.
Across the table, one of the subordinate officers clapped a hand to his beard to mask humor. The duty captain noticed, and snapped, “Swellhead or not, he can’t stay in camp unescorted.”