But for all their valor and all their efforts, they were merely three, facing an experienced band of thrice that number, with reinforcements close at hand. They would fight well—they might take several of the enemy with them—but they would lose. Of that, even a blind man could have little doubt.
His rudimentary disguise would not hold, not here, for these soldiers were a unit and knew one another by sight. Still, as Cerris rose and sprinted from the copse, his tabard bought him precious seconds before the enemy recognized him as an outsider, seconds that would have to suffice.
He stumbled on weakened legs, and his side ached as though a Cephiran blade had already punched through his hauberk, but Cerris dared not stop. He nearly collided with the first of the wagons, his chest heaving, and shattered a wheel with the Kholben Shiar. On he ran, crippling the second vehicle, then the third, while soldiers closed from all sides. At the fourth, he took his blade not to the wheel but to the harness, and clambered awkwardly atop the horse he’d freed. The beast glanced back at him curiously, but if it was not a trained warhorse per se, it had seen sufficient combat that it shouldn’t readily panic.
The first soldier reached him, stabbing with a short-hafted spear. Cerris kicked it aside and brought Sunder down upon the man’s helm. It was an awkward blow, made more so by the lack of saddle and stirrups, but still the Kholben Shiar cleaved steel and bone. Cerris hauled on the reins, kicking the body toward another of the onrushing enemy as he guided the horse about. A Cephiran broadsword swung as the beast moved, drawing a thin line of blood across a tan-mottled flank. The horse whinnied and leapt away from the sudden pain, and only three fingers curled in a death grip through its mane kept Cerris from tumbling off the rear end.
Kicks, tugs, shouts, and possibly even a few vicious threats finally brought the beast under control; and indeed, it was already heading where he needed it to go. Sunder held aloft, hollering to draw attention away from Irrial, Cerris charged the cluster of crimson tabards surrounding her.
The outermost soldiers scattered, unsure at first what sort of menace thundered their way. Two of the men nearest the sore-pressed insurrectionists split their attentions just a heartbeat too long and dropped, bleeding, to the earth.
Drawing nearer, horse surging beneath him, Cerris saw that the man whose name he’d failed to recall had fallen, leaving Irrial and Rannert to face the Cephirans alone. Sunder whirled in an underhanded arc, catching an approaching soldier from the side, lifting him briefly off his feet before shearing through him. More of the warriors who’d leapt from the charging mount’s path were up and converging once more, and Cerris could only curse, wondering if he’d could reach Irrial’s side in time.
And then Rannert—stiff, staid old Rannert—broke past the nearest soldier facing him, ignoring what must have been an agonizing blow to the ribs, and hurled himself at the wall of Cephirans separating the baroness from her would-be savior. Sword and fists, feet and even teeth pounded flesh or glanced from armor. Cephiran blades pierced aged skin, broke weakened bone, but the faithful servant steadfastly refused to fall. Not now, just a moment more …
Cerris gawked, awed, at the venerable butler as the horse galloped on, and damn if he couldn’t have sworn that, for the first and last time, Rannert smiled at him. Then he was past, slipping clean through the corridor Rannert’s wild assault had opened in the Cephiran ranks. Cerris tossed Sunder to his left hand, reaching to catch Irrial’s arm with his right. With a grunt of sudden pain—Cerris never was certain which of them it had come from—she was off the ground, swinging awkwardly up and around behind him.
In an instant they were gone, leaving the Cephirans far behind, though Cerris knew better than to slow down lest a swift-thinking soldier free another of the horses and pursue. He felt her hands clasp tight about his chest, her face pressed against his neck, the wet touch of tears trickling down his skin.
But with his own fingers wrapped tight about Sunder’s haft and the horse’s reins, his voice trampled beneath the pounding thud of the hooves, Cerris couldn’t even try to comfort her.
“THERE’S ALMOST NO ONE LEFT,” she told him softly as evening neared, the first words she’d spoken since the disastrous battle. “A few ran, but I don’t know if they got away.”
Cerris had driven the poor horse mercilessly, running it ragged across uneven grasses far from the highway. Finally the panting, lathered beast had snapped its leg in some animal’s burrow. Irrial, eyes encircled in red, had looked away as Cerris and Sunder ended its pain.
But the horse had done them proud before the end, carrying them in a wide circle behind the Cephiran wagons, almost back to Rahariem, before it fell. The fugitives had once more blended with the scurrying workforce of citizens and soldiers, still hauling rubble after all these hours, then vanished into the city. They huddled now in the cooper’s workshop where the stillborn resistance had been conceived.
Cerris, limbs aching, his entire body limp with exhaustion, forced himself to sit upright, to place what he hoped was a comforting hand on Irrial’s arm.
“They knew we were coming, Cerris,” she said. “There were so many soldiers waiting in those wagons, they must have been expecting trouble.”
“It was a trap,” he agreed. “I just wish I knew who …” His shoulders bunched in a sad shrug.
“Someone in the resistance?” Irrial asked. “Is it safe for us to be here?”
“I think it should be.” Cerris rose and began slowly to pace, the mindless repetition helping his fatigue-swaddled mind to think even as it sent new complaints through sore calves. “If someone in the group had betrayed us, the Cephirans wouldn’t have needed to set a trap. They could have hit us during any one of our meetings.” He jerked to a halt as a thought struck him across the face like a gauntlet. “Is Andevar …?”
Irrial shook her head sadly. “He led the ambush, Cerris, and he tried to hold them off so we could run when he realized what was happening. He was one of the first to fall.”
“Damn. Damn. I liked him.”
“Me, too.”
Silence, save for Cerris’s pacing steps. And again he halted abruptly, brought up short this time by Irrial’s sudden intensity.
“Yarrick,” she spat. “It had to be!”
“I don’t know, Irrial. I told you before, he has no real reason to love Cephira. They—”
“They could have paid him off! Or made him gods-know-what promises. But who else could it be? Nobody outside the resistance knew we were going to hit that caravan!”
“Yarrick didn’t know we were going to—”
“But he knew you were asking about it. If they knew an underground was forming, and that you hadn’t fled town after your escape … Well, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out the real reason you were asking, would it?”
“It doesn’t sound right,” he protested, but it sounded weak even to his own ears.
No, that wasn’t true at all. He just didn’t want it to sound right. Because if Yarrick was a collaborator, that meant Cerris himself tipped them off. It was his fault those men and women, Rannert and Andevar, were dead.
‘It was your fault the moment you agreed to support this stupid insurgency. You’re only feeling guilty about it because they failed. But then, you’ve always looked smashing in that particular shade of hypocrisy.’
“That’s not true!” he hissed, ashamed that he was once more arguing with himself, grateful that Irrial hadn’t heard him—and terrified that, just maybe, that mocking tone spoke truth.
Irrial stared at the floor, Cerris at the far wall. Neither provided them with any answers.
TOO MANY OF THE CEPHIRANS had seen them this time, Cerris reluctantly decided as Rahariem bedded down beneath its blanket of night. Even if the names Baroness Irrial and Cerris the Merchant weren’t known through the ranks of the soldiers, the descriptions of those who had escaped their trap would surely be making the rounds. Someone might even have sketched them. They couldn’t be seen out and about any longer, but neither
could they indefinitely sit in the back of Rond and Elson’s shop. For one thing, they had to know if anyone else had escaped, if there remained any ashes of the resistance from which a phoenix might arise.
And so, with no other options available, Cerris admitted to Irrial just how he’d escaped from his work gang and his Cephiran overseers. On any other day, Irrial might have reacted to the revelation that he was a wizard on top of everything else—even one of only middling talent—with no small degree of amazement. Tonight she said only, “I wish it had been more help.”
Cerris began to wonder if something more than the loss of their companions, devastating as that might be, was eating away at her.
She brightened a little, though, when he explained that those same magics might enable them to hunt for other survivors. “Though I’m not saying it’ll be easy,” he warned her. “I’m tired as a succubus with a quota, my spells aren’t very potent at the best of times, and I’ve never tried maintaining one of these phantasms on someone else at any great distance. We can’t afford to rely on them for more than a few hours, and you need to avoid speaking with anyone who knows you well. There’s a good chance they’ll see through it.”
“I understand. Do it.”
Moments later, a man and a woman who only somewhat resembled Cerris and Irrial departed the cooper’s workshop.
The better to avoid running into anyone whose familiarity might prove troublesome, Irrial headed toward the late-night taverns she’d never frequented in her prior life as an aristocrat, while Cerris donned the Cephiran tabard that was starting to feel as familiar—and as much in need of a warm bath—as his own skin, and took to the streets.
As the moon flounced through the sky, leaving a wake of brokenhearted stars, Cerris meandered from block to block, chatting with guards standing post, off-duty squads working on a friendly drunk, even an officer for whom he offered to carry a crate of charts and records (aggravating his back in the process). Most had heard only third- or fourth-hand accounts of the engagement, in which the size of the attacking force and the valor of the Cephiran warriors were both obscenely exaggerated. All accounts agreed, however, that only a very few insurgents had survived, and most of those were held under heavy guard, awaiting brutal interrogation. Cerris felt as though his heart had sunk so low he was in danger of digesting it, and he held precious little hope that anyone but Irrial and he remained.
By the time he returned to the cooper’s, it was all he could do to drag his feet across the cobblestone streets, and his neck ached abysmally from the strain of supporting a head stuffed with sand. It had been a very long day, filled with exertions physical, emotional, and mystical, and Cerris was frankly surprised that he hadn’t simply collapsed like a sack of grain—very, very tired grain—hours ago.
Irrial, apparently having taken his warnings to heart, was already back, waiting for him on the workbench.
“I’m afraid,” he said, dropping hauberk and tabard in an untidy heap by the door, “that I didn’t—Irrial! What’s wrong?”
For he’d seen, finally, that the gaze she’d turned his way was harrowed, her face so terribly pale that her freckles stood out like blotches of rust, the dark circles beneath her eyes as gaping sockets.
“I think my cousin’s dead, Cerris,” she told him softly.
“What—Duke Halmon?” He’d meant to go to her, to comfort her, but found himself sitting down hard, all but falling, on a barrel across from the bench. “How …?”
“They’re just rumors,” she admitted, chewing the ends of her hair, “but so many …
“I spoke to friends and family of half the resistance,” she said after a moment, regaining some measure of composure. “But nobody’s heard from anyone. Either everyone left is hiding very quietly, or …” There was no need to finish. They both knew what or meant.
“It was while I was in the taverns,” she continued, “that I heard the rumors. Some of the people the Cephirans have rounded up from other towns say that there’s a reason beyond the normal squabbling that’s keeping the Guilds and the nobility from responding to the invasion. They say a lot of Guildmasters and nobles have died recently. Including—including Halmon.”
“I heard a little something about that,” he said, deciding that now wasn’t the time to mention precisely who had told him. “But I never heard anyone named, or I’d have told you. And they didn’t say exactly what—”
“Murdered,” she told him intently. “By Corvis Rebaine.”
The barrel tilted beneath him. Cerris’s legs twitched, his arms flailing as he struggled to keep his balance against what felt like a physical blow. “Wh-what did you say?”
She shook her head incredulously, misinterpreting the cause of his shock. “I know. Of all the times for that godsdamn bastard to crawl back out of his hole. If it’s true, no wonder the nobles are so hesitant to give up their soldiers. And no wonder the Guilds are that much more determined to have them. This is all we bloody needed, isn’t it?” Then, more softly, “Hasn’t he hurt us enough?”
Cerris actually trembled, just a bit, his jaw hanging mute.
“Oh, Cerris, I’m sorry.” Casting her own grief aside, she rose and laid a gentle arm about his shoulders. “You must be exhausted. Come, we’ve got some cots back here that’ll do for the night. We can decide what to do tomorrow.”
Numbly, he allowed the baroness to lead him across the room, to tuck the blankets around him as though he were a child. But despite a weariness so deep it pressed upon his soul, Cerris found sleep an elusive quarry for many hours to come.
“My sincerest apologies, good sir.” The speaker had a greying beard and heavily lined face, but though his physique was running to fat, the peculiar rippling of his flesh suggested a powerful musculature beneath. He wore a leather apron scorched a dozen times over, and smelled strongly of smoke. “I didn’t rightly expect it t’ take me so long.”
“Quite all right,” the younger fellow replied as the blacksmith led him past the forge and into the workroom beyond. “I knew it was an unusual commission from the start.” He grinned without much mirth. “I’d have to have been crazy not to, really.”
The blacksmith wisely chose not to respond to that. “I know we’ve been over this,” he said instead, “but I have t’ ask once more. Are you certain this is what you want? You’ll find no better armor’n mine, but those spikes you asked for … Someone strikes ’em at the wrong angle, they’ll guide the blade right to you when it might’ve missed.”
“I’m willing to take that chance. May I see it, please?”
A callused hand yanked away a heavy cotton blanket. Both men stood rigid, a faint chill running up both spines even though the younger had designed the abomination before them, and the elder had forged it.
Even unoccupied, it loomed, straining forward on the rack as though ready to wrap metal fingers around exposed throats. Black steel, white bone, spines sharp enough to skewer anyone who so much as looked at them wrong …
But it was the helm to which they were irresistibly drawn, rats staring up at a swaying serpent.
“If nothin’ else,” the old man offered with a forced chuckle, “nobody who sees you in this monstrosity’s goin’ to forget you anytime soon.”
“That,” the other said, “is entirely the point.”
The gaping sockets of the iron-banded skull looked into their souls, and the jawbone laughed in silence.
CERRIS AWOKE, blinking away the dream and the afterimages of that blasted skull, to find the blankets twisted into a veritable rope around his body. Obviously, his fatigue notwithstanding, he’d not experienced the most restful sleep.
‘Why, it’s almost as though you had something weighing on your mind.’
Disentangling himself and tossing the blankets to the floor, he sat up and peered blearily about. The light gleaming through the high windows and the sounds of the street outside suggested that he’d slept away not only the morning, but part of the afternoon as well. No surprise, that. As the v
arious shocks and disappointments of the past days filtered slowly into his brain from wherever memories hid at night, he rolled off the cot, made quick use of the copper pan currently serving as a chamber pot, and stumbled halfway across the workroom. Then—limping on a newly aching toe and loudly cursing the leg of the workbench, but substantially more awake—he crossed the rest of the chamber, dipped a mug into a barrel of lukewarm water, and washed some of the nighttime grit from his mouth and throat.
And it was only then that his mind caught up with his senses, and he realized he was alone.
“Irrial?” And a bit more loudly, making a slow circuit of the room as though she might’ve been hiding behind a barrel. “Irrial? Are you here?”
Nothing.
All right, no reason to worry. She could be elsewhere in the shop, perhaps arranging with Elson or Rond to acquire some food. She might even have darted out for supplies, or to find out what was happening in the city, though he wished she’d waited for him to cloak her in another illusion. Or perhaps—
He stumbled to a halt at the far wall, where a polished sheet of brass hung as a makeshift mirror. A large pair of shears lay open on the floor, amid a scattered heap of auburn tresses. Cerris nudged it with his bare feet, seemingly unable to comprehend its presence. Despite the poking and prodding, the hair revealed nothing new.
Now, perhaps, it was time to start worrying. Obviously, whatever she was doing, she’d taken rudimentary steps to keep from being recognized, and that assuredly meant it was something Cerris didn’t want her doing alone. He dressed swiftly, ready to go hunting for her, scooping up Sunder and reaching for—