"Her Grace leads," Korendir finished. "Go, and on your lives and honor, don't either of you look back."
The fugitives hurried across the avenue and faded into shadow by the gate house. Korendir set his shoulder against the wall, the last rope hooked loosely through his elbow. He caught Iloreth's waist and hefted her upward, hastening the start of her climb. Daide followed more awkwardly. Five months with child by the sultan's heir, she raised not a murmur of complaint, though pregnancy added clumsiness to her hardship. As Korendir boosted her after the princess, her frail hands caught the rope as though it held her last hope in life. Daide climbed at Iloreth's heels, her hooded head tilted upward toward the battlement and freedom.
In that most vulnerable moment, the night echoed with approaching hoofbeats. Down the street a staff messenger sent after reinforcements spurred clear of the riot. As his sweat-lathered horse jibbed through an unruly corner, the rider chanced to look up; he spotted dark-clad figures in the act of scaling the wall.
Korendir's thrown dagger found the man's heart too late to prevent outcry. As the messenger toppled from his saddle his dying scream rang the length of the avenue.
Sentries in the adjoining gate houses raced out at the disturbance; mounted patrols abandoned the fray that still raged in tangles around the wine tuns. Someone on the battlements sounded an alarm bell, and pursuit converged from both directions.
Korendir flipped the rope from his forearm. He spun and faced the galleries that overhung the thoroughfare along the inner wall. His throw sent coils snaking upward. Multiple loops snagged over ornamental spikes and grille railings that extended along the balconies above his head. Earlier, the pins which secured the brass panels had been replaced with the dowels from the carpenter. Unobtrusive twists of wire joined one panel to another above the level of the street. Grim as death, and as ruthless, Korendir bent the tail of the line around a lamp post. Then he slammed his weight against the end.
Spice wood slivered under stress. Jerked askew, a six-foot panel dove over the brink. Korendir tugged again. Wrenched in chain reaction that carried the length of the block, the grilles on the second-storey galleries cartwheeled into the air and fell twisting over the lances of the oncoming cavalry. Upset like a row of dominoes, ponderous pounds of wrought brass scythed down horses, men, and bystanders with the mangling force of a cataclysm.
The dissonant chime of metal blended with the screams of casualties. Pinned like insects, the victims scrabbled to escape the shift of tumbled grilles which snapped limbs and crushed skulls without distinction. An officer unhurt in the wreckage tried vainly to bellow orders.
Korendir shrugged clear of the rope that had set his diversion in motion. He footed across jumbled panels to the wall and glanced skyward. Iloreth was safely up and over the upper battlement; Daide negotiated the topmost spikes.
An arrow glanced, chattering over masonry. Korendir ducked a gritty fall of mortar. Somewhere, perhaps in the adjoining gate house, an archer remained with a clear head. The mercenary set the rope swinging to hamper the bowman's aim, then furiously began to climb. Darkness made him a poor target and a relief charge sent in by the cavalry commander served only to abet his escape.
The mounted division swept through the wine riot at full gallop. Beggars and drunken prostitutes shied clear, shrieking imprecations; not a few were trampled down. The horses surged past unimpeded. Korendir never looked back as the cries of the lead riders cut like a knife through night.
Their mounts were first to suffer. Slender forelegs clanged through the open scrollwork of the fallen grilles and momentum did the rest. Caught short, the thousand-pound chargers flipped like trouts on a line. Their riders were messily crushed. A tangle of snapped limbs and agony, the war horses thrashed. Their hooves rained smashing ruin upon those unfortunate survivors pinned within range.
Korendir topped the wall as the second rank of cavalry pressed haplessly to ruin by the riders that galloped behind; twenty-two horses were broken before the charge could be halted. The rear ranks avoided the carnage only to find themselves preoccupied by mounts that shied from the smell of fresh blood.
Only the archer in the gate house remained to defend the walls. His aim was righteously vindictive.
Korendir crossed the bridging arch amid a clattering fall of shafts. He caught the descent rope by touch and flung himself over the brink. Before he dropped, a war arrow hammered into his forearm. His grip tore loose. Left one hand and friction to brake his fall, he plunged in an uncontrolled slide. Skin ripped from his palm. He lost the rope, hit ground in a rolling sprawl that allowed no chance to correct mistakes. The war shaft jabbed earth, drove cleanly through flesh and muscle, and snapped off. Korendir struck a ditch with a force that slammed the last air from his lungs. For a prolonged and dangerous moment he lay doubled, utterly unable to rise.
His chest unlocked at length. Breath and then movement returned. Korendir shoved to his knees. Daide lay in a heap of wilted cloth to his left, an unlucky victim of the archer. Iloreth had gone on to the hollow where horses awaited. Against orders, she returned, leading all three mounts by their bridles.
Korendir swore. He drew out the headless fragment of the arrow, threw it down, and regained his feet. Telssina's walls were still manned, and the disaster unleashed in the streets would no longer serve as protection. The sultan's faithful would regroup and pursue in a passion for vengeance, while guards would recover from shock. If Iloreth attracted notice from a wall sentry, reparation would be instant and this time no cover was prearranged.
Korendir bent swiftly over Daide. A check with his good hand established the fact she still breathed. When the princess arrived he commanded her to help lift, and with combined effort the injured woman was hauled across the saddle of a nerve-jumpy gelding. A cut length of rope secured her unconscious body over its withers. Korendir gestured Iloreth up behind, then vaulted astride the larger of the remaining two mounts. He whipped both animals to a gallop, driving the riderless one ahead.
The thunder of horses in flight raised noise impossible to overlook.
The throaty wail of a horn split the night at their backs. Lights blossomed in the guard tower, while to the east, Telssina's steel-wrought gates swung wide and disgorged a yelling company of horsemen. Oiled bodies shone beneath streaming cressets, and each man's drawn scimitar deflected needle-thin reflections against the darkened wall.
Korendir measured the situation at a glance. He directed the princess and Daide under cover in a thorn thicket, then headed off the spare horse. A one-fisted haul on the bridle turned his own mount after the gelding's high-flung tail. Korendir rode with eyes narrowed against pain. Carefully he judged distance, then veered his pair of fear-maddened horses in an arc across the warriors' charge.
When the company wheeled to give chase, Korendir dropped his reins. He unsheathed his next to last knife and flicked his wrist in a throw. The blade spun flat and buried hilt deep in the flank of the riderless horse.
Tormented by the bite of the steel, the gelding coughed and shot ahead. Korendir felt his own mount quicken to keep pace. He freed his toes from the stirrups and snapped off in a flying dismount. His injured wrist marred his balance; instead of landing upright, he stumbled head over heels and smashed to a bruising stop in a thicket. Nettled by more than clumsiness, he looked up to ascertain that both horses pounded in panic ahead of the oncoming cavalry.
Like a flaming serpent from hell, the sultan's finest screamed warcries and whipped up their mounts.
Korendir pulled clear of crushed thorn leaves. He gripped his last knife in grazed fingers and crouched against the sand. Motionlessly he waited as the horsemen hurtled by. Shadows from their torches flicked his face. Sand flung up by the milling hooves stung in showers over his cuts. He endured, patient, until the last man and animal thundered past. Then in one move he straightened and made his throw.
The steel flew and sank with clean accuracy in the trailing rider's back.
Ruled by the pride of hi
s race, the warrior toppled without sound. His rigorously trained mare stopped in her tracks and resisted the herd instinct which urged her to flee with her fellows. She pawed, ears flicking nervously, and waited for her master to rise.
Korendir intervened to ensure the man would not. While his victim lay stunned, he leaped from cover and stuffed his cloak in the Datha's mouth. Then he bound the braceletted wrists with cord, cleared his weapon from its sheath of enemy flesh and staunched the bleeding that followed. Once assured that the man would survive, he seized the oiled flesh of one bare shoulder and flipped the warrior over.
The mercenary's gaze held no mercy as he confronted a face pinched with hate.
"I've a message for your sultan," he said to his captive. "You're my appointed envoy. Tell your sovereign that Korendir of Whitestorm was responsible for the murder of his Arhagan guest, and also for the theft in his seraglio. Invite him, in my name, to satisfy the insult to Datha's honor on the knoll beyond Erdmire Flats. I will await His Excellency's presence in a fortnight's time. Now, repeat that to me."
Korendir jerked off the gag. Met by insult the instant the warrior found his voice, the mercenary returned an ungentle measure that left the man miserably retching. Afterwards, his message for the sultan poured in a torrent from the whitened lips of his victim.
"May Irdhu's Fires consume your flesh, and that of your misbegotten offspring, light-eyed man," the Datha gasped at the end. He was afraid. The curse was not the worst he could have uttered.
Unmoved by threat of divine retaliation, Korendir replaced the gag. He vaulted into the warrior's empty saddle and rode off into the night, the fingers of his sound hand busy stripping off the brass which bedecked the mare's battle tack. The spangles he flung into the sand underfoot, lest their glitter betray him to the sultan's patrols.
Desert dawn spread gilt across the sky by the time Korendir overtook the princess. Doubly laden, her gelding had lost its early freshness; though Daide had ceased to breathe during the night, Iloreth refused to abandon her body to be picked by scavengers. Korendir had not gainsaid the princess's sentiment. When the sun climbed high enough to shimmer heatwaves over the gray-brown tassels of the desert fern, he ordered a halt in the shade of an outcrop.
Tired and sore beyond patience, he helped the princess from the saddle. Although the effort taxed his hurt arm, he gathered the body in the black shroud of his cloak, and laid it straight upon the sand.
He spoke then with piercing directness. "If this is an unsuitable place for me to dig a resting place for Daide, bear in mind that she might cost your horse his life. I will run the gelding until he breaks, should the sultan send a patrol. Daide will be left where she falls. I'll not risk your safety for a corpse."
Head bent, Iloreth sank down beside the body of her former companion. Almost an hour passed before she extended a rope-burned finger and traced her reply in the sand. "I'll take the chance," she wrote. "Daide's father will be grateful, and I want South Englas to know she. died free of the sultan. For trying, you deserve my people's reward."
Korendir surprisingly capitulated without argument. "Your Grace," he said, and knelt in acknowledgment of rank as if he were a vassal given royal command.
Puzzled by a courtesy contradicted by his edged manner, Iloreth wondered upon the nature of the man who had saved her. Plainly the honor she sought to bestow was least among Korendir's intentions.
In silence, the princess and her rescuer shared rations from the Datha's stolen saddlebags. Then Iloreth sank down and garnered a much needed rest. Korendir kept watch. Moody, restless, driven by emotions that never showed, he settled finally against a striated shoulder of rock. While the Princess of South Englas lay asleep, he built up a tiny fire, peeled the sleeve from his arm, and boiled fresh water to cleanse his wound.
The Sultan of Datha sent no more patrols. Confronted over breakfast by a sand-flecked guardsman who brought news that a light-eyed northerner had violated the sanctity of the palace and escaped, his Excellency left pastries on his platters. While meat congealed uneaten between the crested handles of his cutlery, the doors of the armory gaped wide to admit a bustle of officials clutching royal requisitions. Datha's sovereign intended to meet Korendir's challenge. Heir to a prophecy that assigned the ruin of his House to the deeds of such a one, the sultan would not expose his person to danger. He would satisfy honor and the slight to the Arhagai delegation with a war host ten thousand strong.
* * *
Ladies wept in South Englas's City of Kings when Korendir of Whitestorm returned. The long-lost princess was greeted with tears of joy, and Daide with those of sorrow. Celebration commenced with courtiers clad in the black-bordered robes of mourning, and the scene at the palace was repeated in halls the breadth of the realm.
Badgered by scribes for an account of the rescue, Korendir remained uninformative. When the court minstrels repeated the same plea, they found themselves summarily dismissed. The mercenary's conduct might have earned him a satire had Iloreth not been tireless in applauding his courage; her ladies repeated her story, but the northerner cast in the hero's role avoided court company from the outset. Against the entreaties of the king, Korendir took lodging in a boarding house.
Daide's kin sent thanks in the form of a resplendently jewelled set of arms. The mercenary delicately requested their equivalent worth in coin, and heartened that the finest of the ancestral heirlooms would not pass from the family, Daide's father doubled the sum directly. His generosity was quietly accepted.
Though South Englas became engrossed in festivities, the king could not forget his beloved daughter's captivity. Confronted at every turn by her ruined hands and scarred face, and by the silence of her mutilated tongue, he ignored the queen's pleas that he revoke his resolve against Datha.
"How many sons and daughters from South Englas still polish the sultan's brass?" he demanded, spinning his untouched goblet between nervous fingers. "If a way exists to stop their accursed raiders, Neth grant us means to subdue them."
A voice answered, almost at the king's shoulder. "The talents of the Almighty shall not be necessary." Korendir of Whitestorm met the ruler's startled glance with words inflexibly direct. "Allow me fifty chosen men, and all the arrows in your armory. Your prayer shall be granted within a fortnight."
The king rose. He clapped his hands for his scribe, and while guests sat waiting with empty stomachs, a document was drawn up and impressed with the royal seals. The writ was placed in Korendir's hands before either ink or wax had set. This time, in place of questions, the king wished the Master of Whitestorm success in his endeavor.
Korendir bowed and took his leave. The paper granted him unlimited access to anything he might demand; wielding the writ as he would a weapon, the mercenary compelled a select group of men to leave the feast and prepare for his challenge to the sultan.
The palace seneshal, the master fletcher, and the captain of the archer's guard were first to suffer Korendir's summons. Drunk, sober, or sleeping in the arms of their wives, they were rousted to immediate duty. The fletchers were shown bins of war arrows lying dusty in the vaults and instructed to replace the conventional points with bats of quilted linen. Korendir's demands included that each shaft be rebalanced to compensate for the shift in weight. Then the captain's archers were called out one by one, and subjected to rigorous interview. Those not culled off were sent on to more grueling practice at the butts. The Master of Whitestorm took four days to select his fifty; within the hour the final list was read, he had them on the march beneath the desert sun, accompanied by three teams of oxen and sand sledges laden with oil casks and sharpened logs.
Korendir and his picked following arrived at the knoll that overlooked Erdmire two days ahead of the date appointed. The flats themselves were a level strip several miles wide that bridged the sand hills of Datha and the sea with its harbor at Del Morga. The land between was desolate. Coarse, salty soil supported no life but the desert fern, and there, that brittle, musk-laden plant thrived as
nowhere else. The acres east of the shoreline lay mantled under dun, knee-high fronds whose hollow, grease-filled stems whispered in the breezes off the sea.
Korendir ordered the sledges unloaded. Cover was built for his archers behind stakes angled outward at chest height; when the log embrasures were completed, they formed a crude line along the dunes for half a league on either side of the knoll. Korendir had selected the positions with the care that he used to sharpen knives; the archers in the encampment quickly learned not to trouble him when whetstone and steel occupied his hands. Only when preparations were satisfactory did the mercenary reveal his intentions.
Conversation over that evening's meal was scant and grim. Korendir's plan was deadly simple. If he failed, not a man would survive; but if his tactics succeeded, the Master of Whitestorm was indeed the Scourge of Datha prophecy, and the sultan's accursed raiders would ravage South Englas no more. All that remained was the wait until the moment Telssina's army marched forth to answer challenge.
* * *
The sultan's war host reached the edge of Erdmire Flats early morning on the appointed day of rendezvous. Scouts rode in with word just after dawn, and by the time the chill had warmed from desert air, the archers of South Englas strung their bows. They assumed position before midday; alone behind inadequate defenses, each man squinted against the glare as the army drew swiftly into view. The numbers of warriors sent against them were enough to assault a fortified city.
Men swallowed and found their throats parched from nerves. They sweated, irritated by the scrape of sand crickets and the cloying musk of desert fern. Mercifully, by noon when the war host crossed the flats, the mounting heat eased with the wind which freshened over the dunes from behind. Steady ocean breezes stiffened the banners of the approaching host, and plumed the manes and tails of the horses like silk. Sunlight sparked blinding reflections off the spangles that adorned each warrior and mount.
The archers waited. Korendir had delivered their orders in a terse sentence, then followed with a promise to kill any man who acted before the appointed signal. His threat at the outset proved unnecessary; not an archer from South Englas wished to be first to draw notice from an enemy ten thousand strong.