He slipped like a marsh wisp past Talvish, side-stepped the impasse ongoing between Liesse and the armoured officer, and confronted his brother's cocked rage. 'You fish-brained mule! Crap into a gale, whose arse wears the stink?'
'He's grieving,' warned Liesse. 'It's Keldmar's loss hurting. He strikes out because inside, he's bleeding.'
'Ath, who isn't?' Mearn sucked a fast breath. 'I pity the man who can't cry.' He snatched for the duke's chair, poked his brother, and snapped, 'Sit! You've gone dumb and blind to current events! Dakar's in recovery, and likely to block any effort you make to upset the Fellowship's assets. We need allies, you idiot. These are Arithon's people, here to help hold our gates if they want to live long enough to spare Jeynsa.'
Bransian snapped a signal for his officer to stand down. While Talvish looked on with glacial eyes, and Mearn held his ground like poised flame, the pause stretched. For a second, the rising sun through the casements streamed across the laid table and sparked stinging high lights off crystal and cutlery.
'We won't see attack till the dark of the moon' the duke stated at unpleasant length. He spun the oak seat. Kicked back the jut of his scabbard and perched, his regard tracking his younger brother as he folded his arms on the chair-back to brangle. 'You actually have your eye trained on Sidir.'
'I do, at that.' Mearn's sly grin emerged. 'My men need his touch, setting spring traps.'
No paltry asset, the skilled ingenuity that had made Rathain's clansmen feared far and wide for their viciousness. Despite raging loss, the Duke of Alestron had not jettisoned reason for stubborn insanity. 'You think you'll wheedle that spellbinder's assistance, and engage his talent as well? A gambler's thrill, Mearn. This nest of vipers we've harboured for Arithon's interests is dangerous! Nary a one owes their loyalty to me, or this town, which stresses my liver. I feel like the gaffed frog who doesn't yet know that his legs will get fried up for dinner!'
'Have the lot watched' Mearn agreed. 'Who's better than family? Though how anyone around here can get a damned thing past Dawr's perked-up ears is a nuisance I'd give up the cards to eliminate.'
'Old besom was born with two sleepless eyes set into the back of her head' agreed Bransian. 'Got a nose long enough to stick crosswise into whatever's been stowed behind a locked keyhole, besides.'
He snapped up a cold piece of toast and bit down, which signalled to Liesse and the disgruntled officer that the air had cooled enough for intelligent discussion. The grandame's usurping decision would stand, over Talvish's reassignment. The troublesome goatherd and the s'Valerient daughter would stay curtailed by the blond captain's aggressive attendance.
'We've got a war, outside, poised to rip out our guts' Alestron's lord groused through his beard. 'Can't afford trouble stirred up inside, fit to raise spellcraft against us.' He waved Mearn off. 'Let the weasel kiss the bared fangs of the serpent. Find out if yon pack of initiate talent can be tamed enough to recruit.'
Mearn s'Brydion wasted no time. First breath, his low-voiced instruction to Talvish ordered Sidir's blades and recurve returned. 'Clan honour won't let him strike at our backs. Not with the might of the towns set to flatten us.' Belting down stairwells two steps at a stride, the pale swordsman's longer legs an effortless match for his quickness, the duke's youngest brother broached the stickier problem. 'We've got to roust the Mad Prophet out of bed.'
Talvish laughed. 'You don't. He's already immersed his sore head in a hot tub. Suds up to the chin, and for the next hour, sweating out toxins, flat helpless.' He added, serious, 'You've got time to change clothes, well enough.'
'Good.' Mearn grinned back. 'My singed surcoat's waiting.' Which was shrewd good sense: ball-room rags were pure genius to quell Bransian. But no forestborn scout with a Companion's grim history would respect affectation, wrapped up in silk cuffs and braid trim.
'I can't stay to advise you,' Talvish apologized. 'Jeynsa's shooting the butts into straw chaff with war points, and the nit-brained double's too eager to brangle himself into mince. He's already twitching to pick a ripe fight with yon fettlesome northern barbarian.'
Mearn knew that chill tone. His keen glance flicked sidewards. 'A warning?'
Talvish nodded. 'Walk softly with that one. He's seen the rough side of Tal Quorin, the Havens, and Vastmark, and came through with a fist that once knocked Arithon onto his backside, cold senseless.'
Mearn gave a near-soundless whistle. 'By Dharkaron's Black Chariot, did he so!' Beyond jokes, the youngest brother s'Brydion was too canny to playact, or press the martyr's role, nursing an injury. With Talvish's counsel still tumbling his thoughts, he presented himself at the shut door of Dakar's bath chamber with a polite knock.
A peeling curse arose in rebuff. 'If you're a man-servant with a razor, take off and stick it!' Dakar added, 'I'll have no duke's lackey with bloodthirsty fingers plying stropped steel at my windpipe!'
Mearn let himself in. 'And good morrow to you, also.' Without invitation, he minced past the puddles slicked over the white marble floor-tiles. His singed surcoat, in fact, had been torn up for rags, as flammable lint to tip fire-arrows. Now dressed in serviceable leathers and plain steel, with his poulticed arm free of the sling, he paused by the towel-rack and rested a nonchalant elbow on Liesse's best folded linen. 'I should send you a maid with lascivious hands and a drink?'
Dakar glared. His affront lost its edge, muffled through clouding steam lifted off the hot water by the chill breeze through the arrow-slits. His round face was scarlet. Though his eyes were bloodshot as a cut of raw beef, his contempt sliced back without quarter. 'You presume I'd loll back and pant in sweet dalliance, while Lysaer's pack of minions hammers down your front gates? Think again.'
Mearn licked his lips; smiled. 'By the nitpicking pen of the Fatemaster's judgement! Then you weren't so far gone that you missed what we left out for welcome down in the trade precinct?'
'Inside the closed homes, and behind the craft shops' locked shutters?' The Mad Prophet huffed, his greying head sunk to the ear-lobes, and his breath scattering strayed bubbles through his moustache. 'I saw enough to show you a hedge witch's way of striking a spark inside a clay fire-pot.'
Mearn tapped the plain hilt of his weapon, left-handed. He said in testing overture, 'I did not want this war.'
'Neither did Elaira.' Dakar's bedraggled beard lifted clear of the soap scum. 'Don't comment. You'll regret the effrontery, since she's come through the doorway behind you.'
Blindsided, Mearn spun like a flicked snake. The taunt was no feint: the enchantress stood, not a pace from his back. As slender as he, though a handspan shorter, she regarded him with eyes like dawn mist, and the braid of her deep auburn hair draped, unadorned, down her shoulder.
'Are you the ambassador, come pleading for peace after last night's appalling reception?' Unsmiling, she added, as though her thought snatched the thread of intent from his mind, "The citadel may call on my skills as a healer. Payment will be met in straight trade for my upkeep, with no debt incurred by my order.' Before Mearn could voice his nettled rejoinder, she cut in with commanding expediency. 'Yes, you did see the banners of Koriani pavilions pitched by the enemy camp, past your walls. They are not in conflict. The sisters who've come are in charitable service, equipped to succour the wounded and assist with the dying.'
'Never ours' Mearn snapped, cautious. He was thinking of blind men.
'You've got sentries in agony, and case in point, your arm needs something more than a burn salve?' Elaira laughed outright, unintimidated by the hackles of upset male authority. 'Ath above, I won't bite!' Her tartness had vanished. 'Come into the lair of the spider and sit. Sidir's drawn his teeth also, since you gave your trust, and sent Talvish back with his weapons.'
* * *
The tall Companion from Halwythwood was not hard to convince to contribute his skills to Mearn's day-time forays. 'Slavers and locusts that strip growing trees? I would see that sort of two-legged parasite across Fate's Wheel without breeding.'
Sidir asked
for twine, sharpened stakes, flint strikers, and shaved birch, his spare requests clothed in glass-crisp forest accents. 'I work alone,' he declared with finality. 'No one hangs over my shoulder.'
Allowed his strict solitude, he applied his skilled knowledge from dawn to dusk without stint. Perhaps as a foil to thwart Fionn Areth, past doubt disdainful of living pent-up inside of stonewalls, he came and went with a reserve to confound even Talvish's secretive nature. He would simply appear, when Mearn's company moved out. Though his high-strung, tuned instincts made him start, in close quarters, his flickering glance absorbed everything. Sidir never needed to ask for directions. His scout's footfall made not a sound. Once the squads crossed the bridge by the Wyntok Gate, he would melt away, unseen in their midst, as they fanned out and flitted like ghosts between the steep lanes and shut houses.
Their tasks were done quickly, in silence. Sweating in the cold air, flinching from the sudden scramble of rats and the yowl of feral alley cats, they worked their way through the attics and crawled through the darkened root-cellars. Length and breadth across the lower precinct, they strung ropes and tackles, and used sharpened chain under muffling rags to saw through strategic support beams.
Peril hung over their furtive efforts. At any moment, the hammer might fall: unwarned, unprotected, they might burn to ashes beneath the surprise fury, if Lysaer raised Light and attacked.
The false religion's self-proclaimed avatar remained with his field-troops, now entrenched outside the shut gates. Beyond the vacated battlements, he could be observed, a toy figure trotting his caparisoned charger up and down his poised lines. Such glittering prominence maddened the eye; served as flaunting reminder, that his gift of elemental power could unleash destruction and slaughter at whim. Under noon sun, in parade-drill order, his captains in their Sunwheel surcoats faced their war host against the lowest tier of the citadel.
No movement was hidden. The chopped turf saw no contest. The gables built to shelter the sappers creaked across the burned ground, dragged by the lashed muscle of ox teams. The scaling towers and trebuchets inched into position, brought to bear on the outermost walls. Streaked by the pervasive, soot-laden dust and the rust stains leaked from spiked iron, the log rams in their slings were lined up on the studded, barred gates. Pressed by the overseers, the ant streams of labourers with their levers and ropes warped the engines of siege into place.
Duke Bransian's men-at-arms might grind their frustrated teeth, while Mearn's skulking companies set furtive traps in the emptied mansions. They dared not mount any open resistance. Sunrise to sunset, the air boomed to the ominous beat of the enemy drums. Each passing hour, growing dread choked the crowded baileys of the upper citadel. Under flapping, sagged awnings, and on blankets spread over rough cobbles, the refugees endured their pent-up misery beyond relief. Crammed into barracks, or waiting foot-sore, in ration lines that snaked past the ramshackle cook-shacks, Alestron's folk settled their crying infants and broke up the disputes that unravelled to fisticuffs. Anxiety already pinched the colour from their haggard cheeks.
No able hands could be spared. All day, teams of soldiers hauled jakes to the slop carts. They boiled wash water, and scoured the latrine drains with lye, or scrubbed the bath houses with brine, winched up from the Sea Gate.
Talvish was not exempt from such duties, despite his nuisance assignment: he set Fionn Areth and Jeynsa to hauling fresh water from the spring-house well.
All hours, every day, they trudged with yoke buckets to fill the outdoor stock troughs and catch barrels. The stiff-necked pair were too proud to complain of aching shoulders and chapped hands. With each sloshing load carried up the steep stair, then hauled breathless through the windy sunlight, they vied with bets to lift their dull spirits and relieve the back-breaking tedium.
Fionn Areth lost his stake for the second time running. Not, in this case, by fair contest, since he had delayed to return a strayed child to her mother. The pause left him filling the last trough at twilight, too tired to care if he stumbled.
The wind had risen. Icy gusts flapped the soaked knees of his trousers and whined over the darkened dormers. No lamps burned in the pewter grey street, and no squabbling gulls roosted on the bleak cornices.
A hurrying matron bundled up in a shawl chided him for leaving his jacket. 'Storm's coming in. Cotton fog and cold rain. You'll see ice on the puddles, come morning.'
'Last trip' Fionn Areth assured her. He leaned into the howling teeth of a gust, and passed through the narrow wrought-iron gate that led to the yard where the duke's couriers watered their horses.
Because of the wind, his approach went unheard. And because the stripped man at the trough had his back turned, Fionn Areth had warning in time to stop short. No guess, that a veteran fighter with such livid scars ever chose to be caught, sluicing down in an alley at curfew.
The buckets were too full to set down without spilling, upon the sloped cobbles. Hard-breathing, unsure, the goatherd surveyed the man's sable hair, streaked with silver, tied tight at the nape, but too short for a clan braid. The old scars, left by blades, and the new, cut by whips, that marred the taut musculature of a wild animal: this would be the forest-bred clansman from Halwythwood, whose mission had failed to curb Jeynsa.
Now absorbed by unwise curiosity, the grass-lander regarded the bracing, left forearm, and confirmed: the Sunwheel imprint found there was a recent brand.
He had made no sound, no slight move to betray his fascination.
Yet, without warning, the man at the horse-trough exploded into a spin. A flash of silver sped from his hand: a thrown knife! The blinding speed of such reflex left Fionn Areth no instant to duck; no chance to take panicked flight, as the whistling steel flicked past his neck and shaved skin in a burning cut.
He shouted with shock. Would have hit the cobbles on his knees, except that the uncanny hunter was on him. Harsh fingers gripped his yoked shoulders and pinned him, while stripping grey eyes raked him over.
'Sliesheng dhavil Aykrauk i'en kiel'd'maer tiend!' snapped Sidir in a torrent of outraged Paravian. He shook his prey, hard. 'Stand up on two feet! You are not worse than scratched, though by Ath! for rude presumption alone, you deserve to be more than just bleeding!'
'Because you might have killed your sworn liege? That's if your thrown blade had not missed!' Fionn Areth retorted with injury.
The clansman's hold shifted. The bucket yoke lifted away in his grasp, while his left-handed cuff slapped the goatherd aside. 'Fool puppy, to think I'd make such a mistake.'
As the Araethurian reeled against the stone plinth that supported the gate hinge, Sidir brushed past. He retrieved his cast dagger. His victim dismissed as beneath his contempt, he returned for the full buckets. Their contents were dumped without splash in the horse-trough. Each coiled move precisely deliberate, he set the yoke down without anger. Then he rinsed his fouled knife. He wiped the blade dry on his cast-off shirt before he redressed his soaked skin, or his nakedness.
Fionn Areth shivered. Chilled and bruised, with his palm pressed to stanch his let blood, he realized: the dead accuracy of that thrown knife had been pulled! The rumour was true, then. Forestborn clansmen were trained from infancy to track and fight by their arcane instincts. Nor did they seem to be bothered with modesty.
'What crime saw you branded?' the grasslander inquired, point-blank.
Already reclad in his breeches and belt, Sidir sheathed his cleaned steel. He granted his observer no second glance. 'I was born.'
Fionn Areth bridled. 'Didn't your vaunted prince leave instructions that you were to answer my questions?'
Sidir straightened. The cold wind between them ran beyond chill, and yet, he displayed no discomfort. The soiled linen he refused to wear had been tossed, without shame, over his disfigured forearm. 'I don't answer to insult. Or stoop to the sick curiosity that itches to pry into a man's private history. You may ask of things that bear on such subjects only where royal will binds me. But I think, not tonight. Your appalling
discourtesy owes nothing less than an honest and heart-felt apology.'
* * *
Regretful or not, Fionn Areth received no opportunity to redress his affront to Sidir. For three days, a salt-laden wind whipped the citadel, lashing in sudden downpours laced with the needling rattle of sleet. Such weather was untimely, Duke Bransian declared, pacing in angst from his draughty vantage atop of Watch Keep.
While Mearn's companies swore over clogged drains and drenched thatch, the distress of the families in the baileys burdened down the benighted garrison.. Their crowded misery rose to fresh heights, as men laboured to secure frayed canvas and tarps, and keep mothers with children in shelter. Outside the walls, thickened mist masked the view, a trial that fretted the ranks of attacker and defender alike.
Lysaer's war host stood, mired. The last of the siege engines loomed, sunk in mud to the axles, while shivering squads laboured with shovels and boards to free the stuck wheels. The assault staged to launch at the dark of the moon was deferred for three wretched days. While the roped field pavilions shuddered and swayed, the readied war host languished. Men hunched, grumbling in their rust-stained cloaks and soaked gear. They chafed their cold hands around spitting fire pits and endured the stink, as icy torrents sluiced through the horse pickets and brimmed the latrines.
Disease posed a threat that could not be ignored. Alestron's citadel was not sited within the free wilds, where the surge of the flux lines ran strong enough to stabilize robust health. Stored food and crammed quarters bred vermin.
Sickness could blunt the campaign, while sinking morale could attract storm-charged iyats, their pranks to cause accidents and misfortune.
Since the Light's priesthood did not wish its faithful seeking remedies from Koriathain, the houses abandoned in Alestron's lower citadel became a strategic necessity.