The pavilion’s rich appointment masked no softness its doorway boasted two outside sentries, and beyond them, the competent deployment of a first-class field troop at rest. Keldmar knew war. No fault could be found with the force Lysaer s’Ilessid had mustered and trained at Avenor.
Three thousand four hundred eighty-three men, the captain who lingered from the escort expressed his regrets for another seven hundred, forced to remain behind at Isaer.
‘Why were they left?’ Keldmar asked to carry the conversation.
He heard then of the execution that had ended in chaos when a terrible, sorcerous portent crossed the sky.
‘Our liege could ill spare the men,’ the captain finished. ‘But Avenor couldn’t shirk its due part in suppressing the unrest expected from Tysan’s clansmen. The condemned was Lady Maenalle s’Gannley, descended, they say, of the old Camris princes.’
Keldmar sipped his dry wine and scarcely marvelled. Townborn upstarts dared to describe the honourless act of a caithdein’s murder to his very face because competence such as this camp possessed required no excuse for effrontery.
His own brother was an old-blood duke; that Alestron remained governed under the charter granted at the hand of a duly crowned high king was no pittance. Without prior cause against Arithon s’Ffalenn, for the lady’s ill usage, Keldmar would have spurned the cup for his dagger.
Only for the sake of shared enmity would the Prince of the West receive his hearing.
The hour grew late. Pages set out fresh candles, while campfires in the valleys dulled to a glaze of red embers. The coming and going of wakeful men gave way to the tramp of posted sentries. Clear above the camp’s settled quiet came the sound of jingling harness. Then a man called in challenge and was answered. A ripple of awareness like a biting snap of frost passed over those field tents still lighted.
Warned by the signs that stamped brisk command, Keldmar arose as the horsemen drew rein beyond the tent flap. The equerry hastened through to grasp the reins of a gold-stitched bridle.
Then a stuttering flicker of torch light licked over a tabard flecked in jewels and bullion, and Lysaer s’Ilessid strode in from the dark. He peeled off his fine gloves and circlet, tossed both with a smile to the younger of his pages. The elder one handed him a goblet and flask. Hands burdened, the prince crossed the thick carpet, replenished Keldmar’s empty cup unasked, then poured for himself and sat down. The camp chair cupped his frame in easy grace despite the encumbrance of state clothing.
‘I’m sorry for the inconvenience of your wait, my lord.’ Up close, his eyes were unflawed as a zenith sky, direct and sharp under brows the stretched arc of a hawk’s wings. Burnished in candle glow, his straight cut hair gleamed a pale, fallow gold as he added, ‘I envied your escape from the tedium. Etarra’s minister of the treasury is slow as old frost when it comes to sealing writs for supply draughts.’
‘Then you won your gold to hire a fleet,’ Keldmar surmised, the curl to his lips very much an amusement, and his hand on his goblet pinched white. Did you also gain consent for your officers from Avenor to displace the captains of your allied garrisons?’
Lysaer sipped his wine, sparked to a lucent thread of laughter. ‘My designs are so obvious?’
Keldmar’s false levity tore away. ‘I judge what I see. Your camp is professional. Has resentment on the part of Rathain’s city captains indeed tied your vaunted royal hands?’
Unmoved, unstung by the sudden probe, Lysaer looked down; the charged, ruler’s presence about him lent a stillness akin to sorrow. ‘If our disparate commanders can’t pull themselves together, I’d have them mend that weakness early. For against Arithon s’Ffalenn, the rank and file who follow their orders shall have no second chance at all.’
‘They rejected your officers, the green fools.’ Keldmar did not mock. The untouched wine in his goblet hung like pooled ruby against the brighter scarlet of the ducal tabard.
‘A folly to be cauterized in bloodshed. It stands to reason,’ Lysaer said. The late meeting had fretted away his serenity, and yet he was proud; he refused to give rein to restless pain and pace in the private comfort of his pavilion. ‘Our late crossing through Halwythwood passed without incident, but my headhunter captain, Mayor Pesquil and I, share agreement. Rathain’s clansmen only wait upon our weakness, our disorder, and our sorry, unwieldy lack of unity. They’ll strike between here and the coast. We can’t take the easy route to East Ward. That road crosses low country where our supply carts could bog down at each rain. Nor can we risk the trade galleys to an unsheltered northcoast harbour. Our march is for Werpoint, and harder. It’s a cruel step to suffer, but the trials ahead will force our war host to its temper. The army that sails from Minderl Bay will be my honed weapon by then.’
Keldmar regarded the royal person, his admiration silent before challenge. Let Lysaer be first to broach what lay between them, intangibly thick as the storm now brewing in the dust-flat, sultry night.
Like the sword tempered to welcome hard blows, the Prince of the West opened the match. ‘The Master of Shadow despoiled your armoury by sorcery and killed good men in your service. For that, you would fly south and raise your garrison at Alestron, and attack him in his haven at Merior. Why should your duke wait, you will say, upon a balky alliance of town garrisons? Why bide, while we argue among ourselves and leave the enemy at large to slip away?’
‘You left one thing out,’ Keldmar said, and slammed his filled goblet on a side table. ‘You have Daelion’s own bollocks, for expecting my brother to swear you s’Brydion loyalty.’
Lysaer looked up then, degrees colder than the frost-point gleam in his sapphires. ‘I know clanborn pride, none better,’ he said. ‘I put Lady Maenalle to death.’
A moment passed in glaring silence while, royal to the bone, the prince in his majesty refused outright to explain or excuse his summary act.
Blistered by that courage, then forced to unwilling respect, Keldmar was first to look away.
Lysaer’s smile warmed then like a sudden fall of new sunlight. ‘I don’t ask your duke’s word in vassalage. How could I dare? You’ve lost an armoury and seven worthy lives to the wiles of Arithon s’Ffalenn. Over wine, for an evening, let me tell you what my father and grandfather suffered. At the end, I will ask, and you will answer as your brother’s interest requires: to wait, and time Alestron’s attack in concert with mine, or to risk your loyal following alone in unsupported action.’
When Keldmar drew breath to retort, Lysaer forestalled him. ‘No, listen. Let me tell you why your fifteen thousand, no matter how trained, will never seal your success.’ And in the sultry dark, across veiling candle-flame and above the growl of distant thunder from the ridges, he spoke of the sea raids on the world of his birth that had brought his father’s kingdom to its knees.
The storm broke over the Mathorns at dawn, smacking the oiled canvas tents like sails and upsetting the horses on the picket fines. Lightning flared across clouds churned like dirtied fleeces, until the rains fell and rinsed the air grey. Lord Commander Diegan found his royal liege still curled in his chair, his head cradled in forearms clothed yet in the sparkle of last night’s crumpled finery.
A virulent slam of thunder shocked the earth. Lysaer’s recoil from the overwhelming bang scribed in the arc and flare of every unmerciful band of braidwork.
Lord Diegan grinned over the litter of emptied wine flasks at the prince’s dishevelled state of grooming. ‘Well,’ he said, cheerful, ‘did you win him?’
‘If I survive the hangover, I think so.’ Lysaer pitched his words in precarious care through the shuttering rungs of ringed fingers. ‘Is it raining?’
‘Ath,’ Diegan said, appalled to an evil grin. ‘The vintage must have been excellent. The sky is gushing floods to swamp the frogs. Are you going to move? Or shall we call off that tactical meeting you scheduled for first thing this morning?’
‘I hadn’t forgotten.’ Lysaer stirred and settled tenderly erect. ‘Mind you remember when
we meet the Duke of Alestron, in case the trait runs in the family. Keldmar s’Brydion has a demon’s own tolerance for drink.’
The war host gathered to rout out the Shadow Master organized itself, and arranged its vast lists and supply lines, and coalesced in a seething morass of steel helms and spears and ox drays. The last march began to cross one hundred and twenty leagues of road between Etarra and the port on Minderl Bay. On departure, the banners snapped in fresh wind and horn calls wailed salutes from the city battlements.
Within an hour, the panoply paled. The columns laboured east in a soup of sucking mud, while supply carts stuck and foundered to curses from the men, stripped bare to the waist, who levered the mired axles from greedy earth. Horses lost shoes, and wet leathers chafed sores that stung to the run of salt sweat. Through the final, sweltering grip of late summer, the ground baked hard, and the dust rose, choking, to sting nose and throat and rim the eyes red to a punishing sting of raw glare.
Garrison banners and the surcoats of the officers lost their colours to a settled layer of grime. Man and beast and ox dray groaned under a brassy arch of sky. Like toiling ants, the army crawled across the dry plain toward the city of Perlorn. Supply wagons gouged the way into ruts, their teams harried on by the flat snap of ox goads. By night, the provisions were sheltered in palisades built by the vanguard as drop points, each one defended by its allotment of bored guards.
If barbarians watched from the thickets and the dank, rocky seams of the gullies, the most vigilant outrider never saw them. That clansmen lurked there, Captain Mayor Pesquil never for one instant ceased to doubt. He ran his squads of headhunters to the bone on scouting forays, and engineered foxy diversions to catch lapsed sentries and roust laggard companies back to discipline. He bullied and exhorted and had hard cases whipped where he caught standards slackened more than once.
But his officers could not be everywhere. The garrison companies were unused to the wilds, resentful of the hard ground, and sour, smoked meat, and nights spent slapping off insects. When the first leagues passed without incident, the young and the untried, the old and complacent, were first to let down their guard.
The morning dawned when eighteen divisions discovered the bungs prised out of their water barrels. The casks in neat stacks were drained to the dregs, and their draught teams and oxen dropped dead of slit throats at the picket lines. Other tales of woe travelled up the fines, of cart axles broken and food supplies fouled beyond salvage.
Over the cooling carcasses of dead beasts, Pesquil dispatched his trackers. They rode out with dogs in tight, guarded teams, and ran circles over false trails.
‘Barbarians dragged the ground with a fresh deer hide, or a fox pelt,’ he reported, dry as the parched rocks that bristled the landscape, and wholly unsurprised. This is the work of Red-beard’s scouts.’ He hawked phlegm from a corner of his mouth. ‘No use to hunt them. They know how to choose easy targets.’
His hair a gilt beacon against hills feathered with browned grasses, and his hands at ease on his destrier’s reins, Prince Lysaer listened without censure, even as Pesquil spat again.
‘My headhunters are better spent staging false raids to keep our own sentries alert!’ His eyes like jet beads in crimped leather and his jawline grizzled in pepper and salt stubble, the headhunter captain finished in disgust. ‘These raids aren’t staged to kill, but to delay us. They could succeed. Storms and cold won’t wait while we flounder.’
Between prince and captain, the frustration crackled, that the officers from Avenor had been trained to counter just such petty harassment.
‘The garrison commanders must come to us, asking,’ Lysaer replied in the steel calm he wielded these days like a weapon. Their captains must be willing, or their people won’t give their heart for us. Later, you know that could get them well killed.’
Pesquil returned a sour grunt. ‘You won’t let me rattle their nerves into line, well, they’re going to have to get bloodied. Nothing for it. Pedigree pride hates to bend.’ He shook his head, raked a lank fall of hair from his temples, then crammed on his conical helm. ‘Fools. It’s their greenest young boys will get buried for then blunders.’
Forced on short rations, men learned to set a sharper edge on their vigilance. The change earned small respite, too late. In one chilling move, the barbarian raiders adjusted their tactics to compensate. Through the heavy dawn mist, leather-clad figures were sighted while stealing away from the picket lines. Men rousted half-clothed from their blankets seized horses and swords, and gave chase to find themselves lured into the deep brush and surrounded, then picked off at whim by hidden archers.
A day was lost to rage and panic, and a second to rites for the fallen.
The fact that the town garrisons had been singled out confirmed Pesquil’s theory of planned and leisurely scoutwork.
‘No mistake, the ground and the victims were chosen.’ The headhunter captain’s tactless summary assigned heavy blame on the pedigree captains packed into Lysaer’s field tent. ‘We’ve rid the ranks of some useless brash fools. Maybe now your high-bred officers won’t howl so loudly if my men ride under cover with their patrols.’
‘They’ll be welcome, but the lesson’s understood,’ assured the captain from Narms who had suffered the most humiliating losses. ‘Next time, no man of mine will rush to react in hot haste.’
‘No, they won’t,’ Pesquil answered, inimical. ‘Red-beard’s Earl Steiven’s own son, and clansmen don’t replay their tricks twice.’
His words were borne out before noontide when the next ranks to die tumbled into a pit trap sunk into the clay of the roadbed. The snare had been dug through the night, over a span where wagons had rolled scatheless at sundown. The location had been selected for exhaustive inconvenience, on a banked causeway over a gully. The ditches were too steep for wagons, laced with cracks and sharp shale to lame even unburdened horses. Where the terrain offered safe crossing, if a headhunter scout was not at hand to warn of spring-traps and nooses, men died. The lucky were cut down choking, but still alive. The less fortunate broke their necks, or thrashed in screaming agony, ripped on stakes and disembowelled. A courier sent from the head of the column drew rein in a sliding sting of gravel to inform that more snares had been sprung up the road. The way to Perlorn was cut off, supply wagons stopped until work crews could fill in the pits.
Scouts were doubled; then doubled again, and the empty road itself set under watch. The barbarians struck like wraiths and vanished into the summer broom. Outriders who were careless died beyond sight of their fellows, or were killed when their dart-shot mounts spooked and bolted, jerked neck-broken from their saddles by thin cords left strung through the scrub. The raids came at random. Ox teams were shot down with arrows, or men, taken as they sought some thicket to relieve themselves. Harried like an elephant by hornet stings, the war host lumbered onward. The weather broke into rain again as the road wound and steepened and scrolled through the slab-faced bills that framed the upper range of the Skyshiels.
‘Ath, this can’t go on,’ wept a young recruit whose sergeant had died in his arms on a desolate, rocky stretch of road.
‘It can. It will. Damned clans’ll show you worse before Werpoint,’ cracked Pesquil, paused to water his brush-scarred gelding at a mountain spring between patrols. ‘A smart soldier toughens up and survives.’
But hungry men managed setbacks less smoothly. Rations were shortened again, as supplies became hard to replenish. Anger built as losses mounted. Time could ill be spared to mount a task force to scour the brush to rout out elusive bands of barbarians. To fire the grass and haze them off was no option in dry weather. A wrong change in the wind could as easily turn the conflagration and smoke back upon them to the ruin of the crawling ox wagons.
‘Remember, they’re Arithon’s allies,’ Lysaer said on night visits to bolster morale around the campfires. ‘If our war force fails to make Werpoint before the storms, we have lost good men for no cause. To lose heart and falter now will j
ust abet the Shadow Master’s design.’
The prince’s exhortations might bind the men to fresh purpose, but no effort might cool the biting frustration as the war host lumbered into the high country, a month behind its set schedule.
Then the last summer heatwave shattered before a driving line of storms. Rain lashed and fell in wave upon wave of fierce cloudbursts. Water splashed in rungs off the uplands rock to pool in murky torrents and flood the low ground. The ravines swelled and boiled into white water fanged with grey rock, treacherous to ford, and at > times impossible for the draught teams. The wagons were lightened, the food, the tents, the supplies drawn across on strung ropes, then the carts laboriously lashed together and planked over as makeshift bridges. More days were lost, while armour and weapons rusted and the spirits of the men corroded to depression and gloom.
Then the storms cleared before a sweeping wave of cold. Huddled in the frost stiffened folds of their blankets, men slept as they could, or shivered on watch under silverpoint, glittering starlight. Winds off the Skyshiels were the cause of early frost, but here fell the first warning, in the breath of fickle gusts that would build and brew up the winter storms.
‘The howl of wolf packs would be more welcome,’ Lord Commander Diegan said to Lysaer when a wayward blast through their pavilion extinguished the lamps yet again. ‘Fiends plague the hindmost, we’re scarcely past halfway to Perlorn!’
The worst of the route lay ahead, in Pesquil’s relentless opinion.
Midmorning showed them the ravine through Valley-gap, and a road traced with thin ruts over scattered rock and moraine, between stony embankments grizzled with stunted stands of trees. Higher, the escarpments broke into crags littered about the knees with trunks like slivered bone where tapestried stands of black fir lay tent through by debris from past slides.