Arithon locked the tightened strap leather through the crusted tang. ‘Have you looked?’ His jade eyes flicked up, bleak. ‘Every wretch who went down with a wound has been finished off with a slit throat. Don’t presume any burial detail from the temple will show mercy to you as another civilian survivor.’
The blond farmer rejected the grisly prod. ‘I’ll not leave your back unguarded.’
The ferret-quick salvage of the breastplate and gorget took pause, through a lightning spark of antagonism. Then Arithon said, ‘Not with a blade.’ He glanced upwards again. ‘Don’t repeat the mistake! I have sanctioned no bloodshed.’
Adamant, the crofter stood fast. ‘I’ve been charged by the spirit of your closest friend to stay at your shoulder.’
‘Crown law states otherwise.’ Formidably royal, that chilly locked glare, fit to raise frost on hot iron. ‘Your birth in Tysan, Tarens, does not grant you a standing upon my crown oath. A dead man’s appeal cannot bestow your lawful rights as my liegeman.’
But courage insisted. ‘You cannot stay my hand for a forthright defense. Not if our lives rely on a sword’s edge.’ Though a swung fist might have flattened the prince, Tarens back-stepped as if snake-bitten. ‘I’ve accepted the burden! You can’t change my mind.’
‘I won’t try.’ Arithon stood up. ‘Own up to the truth. I knew the song of Jieret’s Name. I also witnessed his passing. Whatever befell you in that dreamed encounter, you are not he, but still Tarens.’
The tang of sudden peril raised chills. Deliberate as a bear, the huge crofter rubbed at his mangled nose. ‘Jieret gave me his memories of you. He also imprinted the best of his fighting skills for your defense.’
‘Keep them and be damned.’ Arithon’s repudiation showed teeth. ‘My will kept no part of your bargain.’
‘How much of an ungrateful bastard are you?’ Outmatched, Tarens stung back, ‘Your past High Earl knows what you once sacrificed to salvage the life of his daughter. Is the posthumous gift of his gratitude not worth my charge to shoulder your needful protection?’
The recoil ceded an unfair advantage as Arithon reeled into the gap opened up by lost memory. Pity trumped the harsh play: Tarens pulled the cruel stroke that should have crushed argument. The dead clansman’s benighted Sight unveiled that sordid history. He knew the fateful day of Jeynsa’s wedding also had brought the back-stab of betrayal: that Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn fell to Koriani captivity on the hour he set foot in Halwythwood to play his lyranthe for the nuptial celebration.
Determined to spare that bitterest blow, Tarens almost missed the flicker of agony, banished a breath before the whiplashed response. ‘I will cut the strings,’ Prince Arithon threatened. ‘Abjure every trusted loyalty I’ve honoured, if ever again, you try to use love as the puppet’s binding to stay me.’
The kindly heart could not try that shield. Tarens watched, helpless, while Arithon donned The Hatchet’s set of grieves. The scale kilt followed next, short enough to pass muster, belted tight for his narrower frame. Distaste curved Arithon’s mouth, when at last he thrust on the crusted war gauntlets. ‘Your cause is not mine, Tarens. But if you tag at my shirttails, regardless, you’ll act as the general’s charioteer and drive where I bid with your mouth shut.’
Honest to the bone, Tarens took up the whip. As the tipsy vehicle jolted and rolled, he braced himself and inexpertly managed the team’s tired pace in the volatile, four-abreast harness. ‘Any day, give me a cross-grained mule. Or a pair of donkeys in heat for a test of my patience.’
His ploughman’s grip trembled on the oiled reins, while the nerveless masquerade at his side adjusted The Hatchet’s armour.
‘You’ll never pass for an unprincipled killer.’ Tarens coughed through the sting of blown smoke. The chorus of victimized screams from ahead frayed the shreds of his determination. ‘Forget the basic difference in colouring, you’re not ugly enough for the butcher you plan to impersonate.’
The war helmet just donned by Rathain’s threatened prince tipped askance, to a waggle of crest plumes. His face lacked the hawkish jut to the chin. Worse, his musician’s fingers did not suit the blunt fit of scale gauntlets. The broad cuffs exposed a bare patch of wrist, too fine-drawn to wield the brute weapons preferred by the figure he meant to supplant.
Pushed to a smothered, hysterical laugh, Tarens scorned, ‘A masterbard clad in steel plate? A bad jest! Further, I don’t look like the egg-sucking spider who serves that brute dwarf as a reinsman.’
‘Do you think?’ Teeth flashed again sidelong, as Arithon fastened the crested helm’s chin-strap.
When he snapped down the slit visor, an uncanny riffle of chill fleeted past. The black moment lifted, and for a second a snap-frozen rattle of sleet pinged off of hoar-frosted metal. Then clean rain returned to the colourless morning. Tarens beheld the surreal astonishment and quailed, along with the distanced dreamer: the few who bore witness seldom foresaw the diabolical subtlety by which use of Shadow might craft an illusion.
For where Arithon stood, the haughty image of the Light’s prime commander glared back, form remade to his enemy’s measure. His mouth wore The Hatchet’s ferocious, clamped sneer. The same glacial stare glinted grey beneath stubbled lashes. Neither was Tarens the hefty crofter he had been but aged to leathery skin and lank hair, and pared down to the wiry build of the charioteer.
‘Spit on my own grave!’ he swore in gruff shock.
Behind the grimed steel, perhaps Arithon grinned with baleful amusement. ‘Dharkaron Avenger’s aimed Spear avert, I hope not! Instead, let’s see whether a parcel of lies might lessen today’s toll of damages.’
But instead, Tarens hauled the worn team to a head-shaking halt. Nape bristled, he turned his obstinate back and retrieved from the floor-boards The Hatchet’s noisome short-sword. ‘This could be the world’s most stupid mistake! Should your bald-faced folly turn wrong, I don’t mean to watch you get spitted.’
Steel brandished, he braced to be struck aside.
Yet the uncanny semblance of the Light’s Hatchet did not fall to hell-bent aggression. ‘As you will,’ stated Arithon in the other man’s rasped voice. ‘You’re not mine to command. But the choice to kill always means closing the mind to the chance of a living alternative.’
‘A philosophy of convenience,’ Tarens challenged. ‘Had I not murdered a temple diviner, I’d have seen the last of my family condemned.’
‘I am not your kin,’ Prince Arithon corrected.
‘Argue that with the shade of your High Earl,’ Tarens said.
‘Then I warn, by my royal word there will come a reckoning.’ Emphatic, reverted to his own inflection, the prince gave his orders. ‘Roll this rig out. Or by Dharkaron’s vengeance, I will throw you off for the buzzards.’
‘Now, who won’t hear reason? I will not back down.’ Defensively cross, Tarens brandished the whip. The thin snap of leather that roused the team cracked across a shocked silence. And dread turned to horror as he grasped the change, no part of their headlong clash after all: the back-drop of screams from the fired village had stilled to an ominous quiet.
The dreamer awoke to the pound of a fist, hammered into his shoulder. He surfaced, confused. As if thrust through fractured water into a world buffeted by too-vivid sensation, he blinked dazzled eyes.
‘Wake up, Khadrien!’ The whispered entreaty was Esfand’s, delivered with a jangled urgency. ‘Fell fires of Sithaer, Khadrien, move! No one can waste strength to drag you.’
‘Wait,’ Khadrien protested. ‘Listen! A vision has shown me our prince.’ Morose for the discovery, he grumbled, ‘Though his Grace will likely be murdered by enemies long before we can reach him.’
‘If you don’t run now, we’ll die ourselves sooner.’ Esfand’s grip badgered Khadrien to his feet.
Which blunt force seemed unfair. ‘Weren’t you the one who blacked out on us, first?’ grumbled Khadrien. ‘Did you hear? I said that I knew where—’
‘Run, cousin. Hurry!’ Esfand interrupt
ed. ‘Yes, I already know that Arithon’s skating the razor’s edge!’
Discomposed, and towed stumbling into the scrub against the slap of iced branches, Khadrien swore, indignant, ‘Daelion’s bollocks! Running’s no use. His Grace is a hundred leagues distant, caught amidst the invasion by Sunwheel troops near Torwent!’
But Esfand pushed roughshod across plaintive argument. ‘Siantra’s flushed head-hunters. We have to flee! No way we’ll throw them off track, they’ve been sent. A damned True Sect diviner’s already caught wind of us.’
‘That’s impossible!’ Khadrien slipped on a rock, bit his tongue, and denounced, ‘We should be too far out of range for a temple-trained talent!’
‘Shut it, Khadrien! Buck up and take charge! If the lane shift has heightened our clanborn talent, every other natural sensitive also will be affected. Are you hot to martyr yourself on the scaffold?’
Khadrien coughed out a mouthful of twigs. ‘May the great drakes seed ruin, and rain scorching piss on the upstart religion.’ He added, plaintive, ‘We’re going the wrong way!’
Esfand grinned over his shoulder, then slithered into the icy freshet that frothed down the nearest gulch. ‘Wet your laggard feet. Or the league’s dogs will track us. Siantra’s ahead. She hauled the packs while I kicked you awake. And we’re going the right way. My Sight was explicit. Our only clear path takes us southward.’
‘But Prince Arithon –’
‘Yes!’ Esfand agreed, at last ripped to anguish. ‘My visions showed me his Grace’s straits, too.’
Which desperation bespoke a sorrow fit to crush their adventuresome spirits to heart-break: for the last living scion of Rathain’s royal line was pitched into the killing field of the enemy war host marching on Havish.
‘We’ll find him,’ snapped Esfand. ‘But for now, his Grace’s plight must abide! Little good we’ll do anyone, if we don’t fly like the wind and survive.’
Early Spring 5923
Second Deflections
The courageous crofters who dared to resist the pre-emptive shock of Light’s armed invasion lay dead to a man on the acres their spring labour shortly should have ploughed and sown. Only scavenger crows yet descended to pillage. Still warm in death, the knots of the fallen steamed on the fallow fields by the settlement, where the timbers of their neat, clapboard cottages already blazed beyond salvage. The last of the women and children were being scorched out of the root-cellars as the flames roared through the torched thatch and the fumes hazed them to near suffocation. They bolted out, doubled with coughing, to be run down by the mounted lancers.
Rounded up squawking like panicked hens, they were penned with the others inside a stout hay-barn, left intact by the temple diviner’s decree. The banked stone foundation muffled their cries. Amid fallen calm, under billowed smoke and sullen flurries of embers, a methodical foot squad cleaned up. The jab of their weapons through wood bins and corn-cribs dispatched any errant survivors. Other dedicates sorted the spoils ransacked from larders and pantries, the milled flour, the rice, the millet, the waxed cheeses and joints of smoked meat claimed to bolster the provision for Havish’s conquest.
In charge of their grim industry, the ranked captain sat astride his war-horse, nostrils singed and his throat rasped hoarse. The pursed set to his mouth and his tensed grip on the rein showed his disgust for the filthy business.
The flames that gutted the cottages never masked the pervasive stench. Or the oily, black pall, which veiled and revealed the toll of stilled flesh sprawled amid the scattered wrack of rifled possessions. Colourless through the grisaille fall of rain, the foot ranks tramped through the sputtering hiss as the drizzle plumed steam off the embers.
Only the muted wails of the infants sawed through the shocked aftermath when the temple diviner in his stainless robe stepped forth and demanded full closure. ‘Fire the barn.’
‘Kill them all?’ The captain’s aghast protest turned too many heads. Regrouped in formation, his idle men listened, their once-polished trappings befouled with gore and their weapons too clotted to sheathe. A boastful few with strong stomachs wiped their slicked steel on their grimy surcoats. The glued blood left behind a filmed smear, while the smatter of macabre jokes floundered into appalled silence. Rain pinged off plate steel. Behind a fired house, someone’s choked scream cut off.
The dedicate captain released a tense breath, misted with condensation. ‘I can’t sanction the butchery of young babes,’ he said in discomfort. ‘We have fathers among us. Men with wives and sisters.’ He tussled with the ornery sidle of his hammer-head mount. ‘Murder’s no task to lay on my soldiers. Don’t ask me to rip the heart from this troop for your gutless atrocity.’
The diviner’s uncanny regard remained placid. ‘These heretic families are, none of them, innocent. Be sure I have read them, each one.’ He flicked his clean fingers, sparkled with the hellish reflections off several topaz rings. ‘Each of the condemned bears the quickened taint of clan birthright and a heritage of wild talent. By the True Sect Canon, under righteous law, none must be left living to breed.’
‘I command fighting men, not paid executioners!’ the sickened captain objected.
Inside the locked barn, a scared mother started a tremulous lullaby. More voices joined in, wracked sour by fear and the sobs of female bereavement. Which brave effort did little to soothe the howls of traumatized infants; or the plaintive child whose tearful demand pleaded to know when her father would get up and free them. Unsettled mutters swept through the Light’s ranks: more than the malcontent grumble of wisecracks, the growl held primal unrest.
The men were glutted on death, weary and dispirited enough from the horrific dispatch of the settlement’s wounded. They had shouldered that action for tactical necessity, since the invasion could not afford to march onwards, overburdened with hostile prisoners. Even the veterans chafed with unease, thrust deep into enemy territory. Cannier than the recruits, they knew today’s slaughter must unleash a ferocious redress when the High King’s enraged reinforcements arrived to defend the realm’s savaged border.
‘We do not kill children,’ the captain insisted.
‘Are you a hypocrite or just cravenly soft?’ The haughty diviner curled his lip. ‘Where is your vow to serve the Light on this day, that once pledged the will to uphold hallowed principles?’
More smoke winnowed past. The rank destrier pawed, while the officer’s glower sparked daggers. The priesthood’s precocious talent stared back fearless, his shaved chin and finicky grooming still fresh. The gold ribbon that trimmed his white vestments stayed unsullied though he trod the same mucky ground that splattered the foot-troops’ boots and leathers dull scarlet.
The power behind his reproof carried threat wrapped in righteous silk. ‘Shirk your duty, Captain, and I promise this. These heretic spirits will die on the scaffold. A closed barn offers them the more dignified pyre. Someone with fibre must shoulder the torch.’ With venomed conviction, the priesthood’s hound added, ‘If not, your troop gets cashiered to a man. For their ruin, the Light’s high examiner puts you to the question in turn. You’ll face the sword as a traitorous minion found in wicked liaison with Shadow!’
The captain stiffened his bull neck. ‘Find your own volunteer, then! I don’t buckle to threats.’
A ruddy staff sergeant stepped up and kindled the torch, although no command had been issued. While the captain’s bold stand-off crumbled, for naught, an intrusive, gruff shout from behind the rear-guard burst through the caught crackle of oiled lint.
Fresh commotion unravelled the square of reserves posted on alert watch by the trade-road. Formation disrupted, they pelted like boys scattered by a smacked wasps’ nest.
‘Light’s glory! You’re deaf as a post and stone blind?’ The inbound barrage of insults gained force, vicious enough to haze the most stalwart dedicates to scarlet embarrassment.
Then the chaos that seeded the whirlwind burst through, drawn by four white horses harnessed abreast, streaming rank
lather and hitched to an armoured war-chariot. The escutcheon embossed on the sides sowed stupefied shock, and even the troop captain lost the hardened poise to stem the surge of pandemonium.
Sharp as forged nails, The Hatchet leaped from his platform perch before his wheeled vehicle ceased rolling. Dwarfed by the socketed pole of his own banner, he brushed past the flurry of belated salutes and pursued his hammering tirade. ‘I said harness me a fresh team. Straightaway!’
The troop’s flabbergasted horse-boy apparently failed to move fast enough. Caught clutching the string of officer’s remounts kept close at hand for emergencies, he had nowhere to jump as the Sunwheel host’s Supreme Commander of Armies uncorked his vile temper.
‘Feed your eyes to the buzzards, they’re good for naught else!’ The Hatchet snatched the ribbons from his charioteer. Angry, he whipped the freed ends through the terrets and lashed the wet straps in the face of the master of horse, just puffed up at a flustered sprint. ‘Have me back on the road with your best team on a ten count. Then strip your insignia. You’re demoted!’
The Hatchet barreled onwards. Above the excuses gabbled in his wake, his bellow laced into the foot-troop, abrasively pitched to split heads.
‘Prepare to march! Are you simpering girls?’ Through the petrified rush to form lines, his gravel tongue flayed a lummox for sloppy deportment. ‘Refasten that helm, you!’ Elbowed through the nearest standing row, The Hatchet lambasted another misfortunate. ‘What’s this? A shambles? Yes, your trumpeter’s neglected to announce me by fanfare. Milk-suckers! You’re unfit to be nose-led. This is my battle-field, not a parade ground! Yet I don’t see a proper dressed weapon among the sorry lot of you!’
Bow-legged and broad as a bristled mastiff, The Hatchet spiked his way past the front ranks. He wrenched the lit torch from the cringing staff sergeant and whipped the flame in a contentious arc. Herded backwards, the diviner scuttled in an arm-waving flap that nearly toppled him on his rump.