‘Your case cannot be made to stand in absentia,’ Taskin was swift to point out.
Mykkael stepped back another pace, the poised change in his carriage unmistakable. ‘Find a way. Understand me! This charge to entrap me is part of a sorcerer’s plot to extend the range of his power. Hold me in restraint, you will doom your princess. Your enemy knows me, surely has since the moment I entered the royal presence without the protection of the shaman’s mark on my sword! Force me above Highgate, and I very much doubt that I’ll be set free with my life.’
‘You realize you’re asking a traitorous act of me.’ Taskin raised his opened palms. ‘Until the king speaks, I’m bound by realm law to enact the will of the council.’
Mykkael shook his head. His fist closed, with distress, on his sword hilt. ‘Choose. I can’t plead.’
Shown the bared force of character behind Jussoud’s assessment, Taskin drew a breath just as shaken. Here was a man, a trained killer, who would hold his integrity above spoken promises. The question demanded an accurate answer: which faction claimed the weapon of this desert-bred’s resolute initiative?
Taskin collected the strained cloth of his faith. Only one course of possibility remained to dismantle the council’s ruling, based in law, by the king’s witnessed word. ‘For Anja’s life, then, answer me truthfully. Can you swear to me, Mykkael, that you never broke oath to Kaien’s do’aa? That the assassin you felled was not their man, sent out to call your life forfeit?’
The reply, forced through anguish, seared for its straight honesty. ‘Oh bright powers and Mehigrannia’s mercy! I breached honour with Kaien, but not for the cause you might think.’
‘Then the only shred of hope you have to establish your innocence is to hold your crown oath to Sessalie inviolate.’ Aware of the tenuous, last rags of trust shredding like tissue between them, Taskin extended himself beyond pride in appeal. ‘Captain, you won’t plead. I will, for your honour!
Show me the loyalty you gave the Sanouk for Orannia. Come in with my lancers and testify!’
‘Save your king as you can,’ said Mykkael with regret. He turned his back, walked, but not in submission. Ahead of his dreadfully purposeful, limped stride, the smudged form of his hobbled gelding loomed through the mist.
He would mount up and ride, Taskin realized, overwhelmed by his shattering failure. Sessalie’s fate no doubt rested still on the unknown, unproven alignment of this desert-bred’s fixed allegiance. A split second of time, to enact the decision: whether to reject the case in the untested belief set in foreign talismans, and arcane patterns of fire and string, or to hold out for the bedrock surety of evidence that this killer was not the tool of Devall’s shadowy enemy.
This, boiled down to the one damning fact: that Mykkael had not chosen to lie. ‘Save your king as you can.’ The last sentence became too ambiguously damning. Taskin understood, in cold fury, that he was outfaced without quarter. He would have to bid for hard proof.
‘Stand fast, soldier!’
No response; Captain Mykkael advanced. Deaf and blind to persuasion, he rejected just hearing under King Isendon’s ear, and the ties of his oath to crown law.
Taskin closed his hand on his sword hilt and cleared the blade with a warning ring from the scabbard. The next word he uttered must summon his lancers in command to ride down a fugitive.
Except Mykkael stopped. Faced about, he held his bared sword in hand, though no sound had attended its drawing. He did not speak. In the waxing light, through the dense mist, his features were expressionless stone. Eyes locked to the form of the crown’s first commander, he took a deliberate step back, then another.
Three more, and Mykkael would reach his saddled gelding. A single, swift stroke would sever the hobbles. His vault astride would happen before any mounted troop could cross the tourney field, far less react in armed strength to prevent him.
Pressed beyond options, Taskin shouted, and sprang.
His steel met the captain’s experienced parry with a virulent clangour. The sound would spur the lancers to charge. Crack men, each one devoted to Taskin, they would converge at a gallop to attack and cut down a traitor.
XVII. Sunrise
SOUND CARRIED WITH BRUTALLY MAGNIFIED CLARITY, UNDER THE STRANGLING MIST. THE SHRILL CLANG OF STEEL MEETING STEEL IN CLOSE combat rang over the oncoming hooves of the destriers. Fist closed on his lance, the wet sting of his horse’s mane lashing his wrists, the guard captain urged his troop on at a gallop. Though Taskin’s skill as a swordsman was legend, the fast-paced exchange veiled under the fog bespoke a ferocity that outmatched every gift of trained reflex, and defied every skilled trick of intellect.
The select troop of guardsmen racing to intervene heard crossed blades scream, again and again, without let-up. Blow met tortured counterblow at breathtaking speed. The clamour of stressed steel left no opening for mercy. The desert-bred creature who attacked their commander was barqui’ino‘-trained, a war-hardened butcher without conscience. Ten men-at-arms spurred their mounts with one thought: to cut the cur down without quarter.
‘The mongrel foreigner’s got a lamed knee,’ gasped the rider alongside the lance captain. ‘Taskin will take him, he’s bound to!’
Yet the belling fury of each passage described nothing else but a ruthlessly desperate contest.
‘Hyaa!’ screamed the captain, and drove his mount harder. But the horse underneath him jibbed and broke stride, forced to swerve to avoid a diabolical array of placed stakes. The air smelled of char. Through veiling grey, a sullen flicker of orange shone where a grass tussock had been set burning. Chilled by the thought he might ride over ground worked by a sorcerer’s lines, the lance captain bellowed a terrified warning.
As he grappled the agonized question of whether or not to rein up, he heard, close at hand, the dissonant scrape of a blade yanked clear of a bind. There came no following chime in riposte. The mist cloaked a field draped in terrible silence, ripped across by advancing hoof beats.
One man would be down. Not knowing which of the two fighters had fallen posed his lancers a lethal danger.
The troop captain shouted the order to halt. He dragged his mount, sliding, on to its haunches, only to feel the reins give way in his hands. He yelled for back-up, already too late. Emerged from the fog, a shadow wearing the king’s falcon surcoat had sliced the strap leather clean through. While the captain rocked, off balance, and clawed to grasp mane, an iron grip closed over his wrist and jerked him headlong from the saddle.
Spun, reeling, then thrust with brute force to the ground, he fell sprawling across a limp body.
‘Stanch his wound!’ snapped a voice from the air just above him.
Stunned breathless, the lance captain realized the sodden, warm bundle beneath him was none else but the crown’s first commander.
‘Taskin!’ He groped, felt the hot gush of blood drench his hands. ‘Merciful powers, he’s killed you!’
Yet the commander’s tortured breathing rasped on. The blue eyes stayed open, demanding. Alive, he still fought. The strong flood of bleeding affirmed a vitality fast ebbing with every rushed heartbeat. ‘Taskin, hang on! We’ll fetch Jussoud.’
Yet the toll of inflicted damage wrecked hope. The lance captain snatched the long hem of his surcoat in desperate fingers, and crushed wadded cloth to the gash that had all but severed the commander’s right arm at the shoulder. Then he shouted to order his company. ‘Grigori, Mistan, to me! I have Taskin. He’s down and in need of a field dressing! You others, ride! The traitor’s on foot, running east!’
Through the mazing impediment of mist-cloaked stakes, amid confusion and yells of disbelief, the lance company wheeled and gave chase. The two men singled out spun their horses and came. They stripped off their surcoats with hurried hands, and took over the grim task of bandaging. Taskin shivered, not lucid, then lay slack and chilled. While day brightened the fog to a tissue of silver, the surge of his pulse turned erratic and shallow.
‘Powers that be damn tha
t murdering desert-bred!’ Mistan cursed in frustration. ‘We can’t lose the commander, not now!’
‘We won’t,’ murmured Grigori, determined. Against daunting odds, he wiped scarlet hands and bent to the grim work of necessity.
Beneath his frantic efforts, the laboured draw of Taskin’s breathing sawed on, the rushed blood flow contained by hard pressure. While the pound of galloping hoof beats receded, and men’s shouts diminished with distance, the ugly, deep wound was strapped in tight bindings.
‘Stay with him. Don’t quit! Mistan, go. Get Jussoud down here fast as possible.’ The lance captain left the fate of his fallen commander in Grigori’s capable hands, and plunged into the white pall of mist. He caught his loose horse, unbuckled both stirrups, then fixed the stripped leathers to the bit rings to replace the slashed ends of his reins. Remounted, he charged in pursuit of his company, heartset to ride down the criminal foreigner who had spurned his crown oath.
He found bodies, first off: three fallen riders cut all but in two, and past help, where they sprawled in pooled blood and the stink of rent bowels. The steaming, spilled viscera flung over drenched grasses became graphic evidence of the violent stroke that had dropped them. Lashed to wild rage, the lance captain raked his mount with spurred heels. He pelted ahead through the cotton-thick mist. Across the verge of the tourney field, he crashed into a stand of woods, a brush-choked windbreak that bordered a village steading of hamlets and farmland. The next lancer he encountered was limping on foot. He reined in and called him by name. ‘Ebron! Where’s that fugitive desert-bred?’
‘Gone for the low road, flat out like a fox. The pace he’s set’s likely to run the horse underneath him to blazes.’ The lancer managed the rest in harsh gasps, his forearm pressed against four cracked ribs from the drubbing blow that had felled him. ‘Kills like a fiend. Nobody gets near him. He ducked under Kevir’s lance, the damned spider. And he’s riding that ugly hammerhead chestnut. Our horses know that brute’s heels much too well. Spurs or not, the creatures refused to close in, or stand their staunch ground when we cornered him.’
‘Your mount?’ snapped the captain.
‘Dead,’ Ebron said, heartsick and furious. ‘Slaughtered from under me like worthless meat. I was lucky not to be crushed as she crumpled.’
‘How many of ours are left standing?’ the lance captain snapped.
‘At best count?’ Ebron’s voice broke. ‘Maybe none. Under mist, we’re blind targets. The murdering creature still wears the king’s surcoat. He can’t be marked out unless he’s on top of us, and nobody realized until much too late: he carries a desertman’s blowpipe and darts, and shoots tips that are certainly poisoned.’
‘Go back!’ cried the lance captain. ‘Take Grigori’s horse and ride for the garrison. I want reinforcements. Trackers and dogs. Get a runner to Highgate. Have Bennent send archers. Mistan’s already gone for Jussoud to do what he can to save Taskin.’
‘You’re pressing ahead?’ Ebron asked, his concern overriding the misery of grief and the seizing pain as his chest cramped.
‘No choice for it.’ The lance captain wheeled his mount onwards, his last words hurled over his shoulder. ‘The desert-bred wretch has now shown his true coat. I’ll enlist help from Devall’s guard, if need be, and see him chased down like hazed vermin.’ A prodigy blessed with keen judgement, Vensic had Jedrey confined under house arrest, with four unflappable garrison men dispatched to stand by his door as enforcement. Then he sent a messenger sprinting to Cade, bearing the summary report of the night watch’s worrisome developments.
That insightful forethought brought the day sergeant in early. He strode through the keep gate, his sheathed sword in hand, along with the belt that had not yet fastened his billowing surcoat. Though his mood seemed disgruntled, only the foolish presumed that the same disarray ever clouded his mind in a crisis.
The guard lancer, Ebron, encountered this fact at first hand, arrived aching and hot from his savage ride in from the tourney field. Used to Taskin’s brisk handling, he delivered a terse account of Mykkael’s defection. Then, lulled by Cade’s laconic quiet, he tried imposing his lance captain’s demands for trackers and dogs, and armed search parties.
‘Soldier,’ Cade stated, unmoved as fixed stone, ‘this is Lowergate’s garrison. By rank and crown standing, I am the watch officer. If Mykkael is disgraced, I don’t see lawful discharge. If Taskin fell to his sword, who stood witness?’
The Highgate man stiffened in outraged disbelief. ‘Powers preserve!’ He suppressed a pained cough, his discomfort made worse by the fumes from the garrison cook’s insane practice of burning evergreen under his stewpot. ‘Are you daring to shield a proved felon? Most of my mounted company are struck down! Three were just gutted by your murdering desertman’s sword. Three others lie paralysed, dart-shot. I’ve got broken ribs, at your captain’s hand. His was the blow that unhorsed me. If that’s not firm evidence, you all risk your necks as a sorcerer’s willing collaborators.’
Sergeant Cade sheathed the knife he had just inspected for sharpness; went on to fasten the baldric that hung his well-used, classic broadsword. ‘But Mykkael’s no sorcerer. Quite the opposite, in fact.’
Ebron sat, shocked, by that quiet delivery. The wardroom bench was too hard to ease him, and the noise of the dawn watch arriving, too disruptive to let him field setback with equanimity. ‘You’ve been duped by witchery,’ he accused, his voice rising.
‘You’re an expert with spell lines? How amazing. Where in Sessalie did you find the experience?’ Bald, stolid Cade stared Ebron down. He seemed not to care that any man in the garrison might overhear such a sensitive confrontation. ‘Before you spout off your pig-ignorant hysterics, you might wait to see how Captain Bennent weighs up the facts.’
‘Mykkael has fought sorcerers three times before this,’ Vensic filled in from the sidelines. He stepped back, making way as the cook’s boy shoved past, arms laden with more fronds of cedar. ‘He’s taught us the means to lay down tight banishings, and left instructions to safeguard this keep. Has the guard above Highgate taken similar precautions? No? Then who’s to say, but an expert, that your high council, and even your lance captain, weren’t suborned?’
Ebron shoved to his feet, drawing stares from the men who snatched breakfast before they marched out for duty. ‘I have comrades cut dead! Some were wretchedly poisoned. And Taskin’s down, gravely hurt with a wound that might kill him, or worse, cripple his sword arm past mending.’
Cade took that ugly news in stiff stride. ‘Vensic will appoint a task squad to bear litters. They’ll take up your fallen and assist with the living. Oh, yes,’ he resumed, before Ebron’s hackled startlement. ‘We’ve been well versed, and by Mykkael himself. Your dart-shot companions could pull through and survive. Not every nerve poison is fatal, and of those that are, all but the worst ones have antidotes.’
The lancer’s enraged protests were strangled mid-word, as Sergeant Cade gave the matter his adamant dismissal. ‘You’ll have a fresh horse to ride up to Highgate. Make your report in due order. Until Captain Bennent responds with a direct command, my obligation to the crown of Sessalie is quite clear. Every man in this garrison will secure the city gates. If, as you say, Captain Mykkael’s a turncoat, he’s already outside and running. Inside keep walls, the safety of the king and his lawful subjects must claim my highest priority.’
Cade called for a groom to saddle a remount. Next, Ebron was hustled off to the stables, still viciously fuming, his arms clamped to brace his cracked ribs.
For one stricken moment, amid the purposeful racket brought on by the change in the guard, Vensic and Sergeant Cade shared a deep glance of frustration.
The older man, as senior officer, was the first one to speak. ‘Your take and mine would appear to agree.’
Vensic’s frown remained grim. His reply rang with venomous irony. ‘That Taskin’s not dead outright must mean that Mykkael thought the guard was misguided, and not suborned by the enemy. He would
have counted the princess’s safety over everything else. How much time can you give him? And how long do we have, before we might face a sorcerer attacking our flank?’
Cade rubbed his pink head, uneasy as he measured the desperate pitfalls that mired the course of the future. ‘I can send out green trackers. Mykkael won’t be found right away, at least by any of ours. If Devall’s men ride, they won’t know the country, and they’ll be several hours behind him. No more can be done, beyond minding the walls. Here’s acting orders, on behalf of this garrison. You’ll accompany the litter-borne lancers past Highgate. Find Bennent. Be sure, if you can, that Taskin stays under warded protection. The commander alone holds the power to muzzle the guard, and unconscious, he’s desperately vulnerable.’
‘I’m away,’ Vensic answered, cued at last by the nod from his staffer that his picked squad of bearers were assembled and ready to march. ‘Stay firm. We’ll survive this.’
The careful, strong sergeant who handled the day watch arose, all his gear set to rights, and his manner as stern as forged iron. ‘Powers keep you close, man, and save your damned prayers. It’s your captain’s survival that’s cast into jeopardy. The only way he can clear his name, now, is to deliver King Isendon’s daughter alive, and keep faith that the crown doesn’t fall in his absence.’
Flat on his belly in dew-drenched brush, Mykkael crumpled up the tail of his surcoat and muffled the frantic rasp of his breathing. He had two darts left. Around him, the mist swirled in heavy white billows, that soon would disperse under sunlight. His bad knee shot fire down the nerves of his leg. Without the chestnut just turned loose as decoy, he had no chance at all of outrunning the lance captain’s rabid pursuit.