Traitor''s Knot (epub)

  The clan spokesman gaped, while his crowding companions looked on in dazed shock.

  'Please do as I say?' No longer smiling, or harmless; not anything less than an initiate master clothed in the force of his self-aware presence, Rathain's prince dropped his disarming pretence. 'Leave me to my work. Or your dartmen will be unsupported in fact. Let that happen, my word as my life, I will call in my friends, turn my back on your High Earl, and forget this place ever existed.'

  Unaware that one man was their self-proclaimed equal, the sunwheel lancers and the company of foot hired as escort to Southshire led the caravan around the bend. The risen sun cut the humid air like ruled brass. Hot in their state finery, and bedeviled by flies, the mounted troop tussled with sidling mounts. If their lance pennons frayed in the stiffening sea-breeze, the tips wore a razor-edged polish. Ganish league's trackers prowled, hungry for scalps. Since their pay shares were kept deliberately lean, the dearth of earned bounties made their patrol of the thicketed verges dead keen.

  With the last fifteen leagues and a straight road before them, the hardened men guarding the Light's gathered tribute breathed the flat tang of stirred dust. They spoke softly and stayed sharp. A veteran riding the wilds by Selkwood well knew not to slacken his reins. Because of the bullion, the drays were mule-drawn. The loads were kept light to hasten the pace, an advantage not shared by an ox-train.

  'Move on,' the road-master exhorted the drivers. 'Push those teams. Keep them going!'

  The lancers held to their nervous formation, given the inauspicious lay of the land. Low sun cast a scintillant glare through the brush at the rim of a sandy bluff. The dazzle shone from buffed helms and gold braid, with the panoply of crested saddle-cloths and surcoats a gaudy welter that muddled the eyes.

  A jay called in the scrub. A louder one answered. The chief tracker from Ganish had reported no sign of clan presence, which only whetted the road-master's jumpy unease. Ruffled by the same wary instinct, the lance captain raised his voice and reordered his mounted lines. The wagons were pinched inside his bristling defence when the first of the mules flung up its head, brayed, and bolted pell-mell down the highway.

  The guard riding nearest did not see the dart embedded in its left haunch. He was yelling, doused under his flapping surcoat, which had jerked itself free of his belt, and blanketed his face and head. The spire on his helm had poked through, with the fabric pinned like a tent. His shrieks emerged, muffled. As he clawed at crazed clothing, his mount shied hard sidewards, and crashed through the ranks of his fellows. The formation collapsed to a clattered snarl of lances. The cloth-bundled victim fell off.

  'Mind your damned lines!' the troop captain screamed. His mount backed and sidled, and snorted with nerves. While fighting the reins, he had time to notice that, length and breadth of his column, the upset was disastrously spreading.

  Every third man seemed beset by his clothing, and every horse snapped and kicked as though air itself turned and badgered its sweated flanks. Then his seasoned mare bucked. He was rammed from behind by a four-in-hand team, rampaging in stampede. The wagon dragged after them, shorn of its wheels. Its bashed undercarriage furrowed the road like a plough, and its sprung planks belched trade goods helter-skelter. The ruckus proved too much for his horse, which skittered, then bolted in panic. Tossed in an ignominious heap, then forced to roll into a thorn brake to escape being trampled, the troop captain reached for his horn with intent to rally his dismembered troop. The drill call was a loss. The brass instrument had been flattened beneath his mailed hip, and the mouthpiece was jammed full of gravel.

  Standing again, he bellowed, in vain. A choking dust spiralled up on the breeze. Pandemonium milled all about him. Men's voices unravelled to yelps and shrieked curses. Chaos worsened from moment to moment. The lance captain craned his neck, seeking one mounted rider, or the capture of a loose horse. He was met instead by three staggering cart-wheels bearing down on a collision course. 'Damn things are possessed!' his lieutenant's cry warned him.

  Past recourse, the captain dived flat in the ditch to escape becoming mown down.

  'Fiends!' the beleaguered road-master howled. 'The talisman's failed! Lost its charge, or went wrong. Now we're plague struck!'

  Around him, beset drivers yanked in vain on their reins. Their veering mule teams locked iron mouths. Eyes rolling, the beasts entangled themselves and kicked up their heels, snapping traces. Some snarled in knots and jostled their way off the road. Drays slammed into trees. Others were gutted, hung up on bushes and rocks. One after another, more vehicles wrecked. With disconcerting intelligence, the nimble sprites were still jerking the finch-pins from revolving wheel hubs. Wagon-beds tilted. Dropped axles gouged earth. The hard slew of the impacts sprung the pegged boards and broke the fastenings holding the tail-gates. Tarpaulins tore, and stacked bolts tumbled out, burst their ties, and disgorged a rainbow cascade of fine silk.

  Bedlam reigned. Length and breadth of the roadway, the caravan unravelled as fast as a snag in knit wool. Unshackled wheels bowled over the foot-troops. Surcoats wrapped wrists and fouled weapons. Blinded men snarled and cursed. Snared beyond remedy, they drew their edged weapons, hacking until their fiend-possessed finery subsided in twitching shreds. Those naked few who stripped to win free raced to catch the crazed mules. One step, or three, they soon toppled over, tripped up by the unreeled fabric. The dumped tribute chests had smashed into splinters and kindling. Coin sacks untied, and the air clinked and flashed as the iyats snatched up their contents. The liberated bullion spun into a glittering swarm and scattered into the scrub.

  Ball-room garments flapped like flags and festooned the verges. Pink, pastel, and puce, draped animals bucked, while their gadded handlers punched and spat irate oaths through sarcenets. Batting tucks and pinched ruffles, or leaping ripped harness straps, the entire troop of veteran guards were thrashed helpless.

  No one noticed as some of the cloth bolts sailed upwards, still neatly bound in their ties. Like the departed coin, the goods crested the sand bluff and vanished from sight, followed, spinning, by the strong-box holding the Tiriac amethysts.

  Above, scarcely able to stifle whooped laughter, the clan scouts from Alland raced to and fro, their shirts stripped off to bag bullion. Others pounced to capture the errant rolls of white silk wheeling air-borne over their heads.

  At Arithon's side, their jubilant spokesman surveyed the mussed snarl left of the caravan, whose beasts and men, provender and haulage, lay scattered amid a whirlwind morass of ripped shreds. 'They'll surely regret they were travelling in state,' he gasped, choking back his amusement. 'Why take the white silk adorned with gold tinsel? Do you have a source with a use for it?'

  'Another day's plan,' Rathain's prince admitted, engrossed where he knelt, hand thrust in a sack placed before him. By now adept at imprinting his will, he blew on his knuckles. 'You're not tired of the fun?' He released another handful of iyats to disorient a party of cross-bowmen who had somehow kept charge of their weapons. 'Did I hear mention that Kyrialt's bride wished to be married in scarlet?'

  The clan spokesman shrugged. 'She's said her man gets no welcome in bed if he can't keep pace with her passion. The red cloth seemed a fitting retort. Those fiends are still taking your detailed instructions?'

  'Most of the time. Like the odd ninth wave, they sometimes defect.' Peering askance through the sheltering thicket, Arithon located an intact bolt the appropriate shade of vermilion. He dispatched another fiend to go fetch. It did not turn errant. His chosen prize arose from the ground, swooped a circle, then zigzagged, and finally lofted over his head.

  While the scouts behind scrambled to catch the bride's gift, the Master of Shadow tipped a nod towards his feet. 'These were more difficult. Would you care to collect them? The winners deserve a keepsake for their efforts, which I'd say were no less than splendid.'

  The Clan spokesman glanced down and saw the impossible: twelve bloodied darts lately retrieved from the hurtling flanks of the mules. 'By Ath, you
'll have pulled off this raid, and left not a tell-tale trace of hard evidence!'

  'I scarcely expect the silk will be missed until someone sits up and takes inventory,' Arithon admitted, nonplussed. Deprecation at odds with his piercing glance, he secured his odd sack with its volatile contents. 'I think we should leave, fast as scuttling rats.'

  This time, the clan spokesman's smile was genuine. 'You're expecting they'll notice the tribute is gone the moment they start to regroup? No one's dead. They can quarter the forest for iyats all night, with nary a wee coin to show for it.'

  Wormed out of the brush in time to meet Dakar, just returned, with Fionn Areth trailing behind, Arithon swiped a runner of briar from his sleeve. 'AH accounted?' he asked, quiet. 'No bagged scalps for Ganish?'

  The Mad Prophet mopped his soaked face, and huffed, 'There could be, if we don't pull out quick with no tracks.'

  Fionn Areth, cheeks glowing, seemed more effusive. 'Vhandon and Talvish had bets with the scouts. We'd better camp in a secure clearing, they said, so they can get drunk and collect on their winnings.'

  The clan spokesman stared, rendered owlishly speechless until the mismatched pair of liegemen strode in. Though hemmed by the pack of disgruntled dartmen, Talvish's inquisitive jade eyes stayed half-lidded. The more stolid Vhandon looked dead-pan.

  Behind the grass-lander's innocent words, the caithdein's picked emissary understood that his forestborn scouts were being exquisitely mocked. Beyond doubt, their skilled prowess had been upstaged by unmerciful cunning and sorcery. In an atmosphere grown too corrosively smug, the royal who held the two liegemen's loyalty spoke first. 'I'd sell that pair out, if we weren't overburdened with fripperies. Who's left to handle a knife in defence?'

  The clan spokesman retorted without humour as the two swordsmen stepped close, a faultless guard at their prince's shoulders. 'You want to escape with your care-free necks? Who else do you have to haul your wealth out of here, unless my men act as your pack-mules?'

  'But I do need your men.' The Prince of Rathain succumbed to a hitched breath that stifled indecorous laughter. 'Relax,' he gasped. 'My brief foray is finished. You don't think there's bound to be murder to pay?'

  The clan spokesman paused. Then he folded in half, wrecked to tears by the prince's double entendre. Empty-handed at Southshire, a crack troop of lancers and their company of foot would be forced to explain how they had misplaced the Light's tribute.

  'A plague of rogue iyats!' The young clansman wheezed, helpless. 'Ath save the poor fools from an undying shame. They'll face jail and certain dishonour. Ganish league's like to gut them for smearing their upstanding character. Fatemaster's pity! In that captain's shoes, I'd be quartering these forsaken bluffs until I was half-starved and ragged!'

  'Surely' Arithon grinned. 'On top of the fact they'll be questioned as thieves, they've got to weather their public arrival exposed in a wretched state of undress.' He flung out an arm, helped the shattered clan spokesman erect and on stumbling course towards the forest. 'By all means, have your scouts guide us safely through Selkwood. In friendship, we'll drink to white silk and gold, and the glory of discord sown through the ranks of the Light.'

  Lord Erlien s'Taleyn, High Earl of Alland and oathsworn caithdein of Shand, was a strapping bear of a man who lived for combative aggression. Within the close grotto used for winter quarters, he could barely stand without bending his neck. The hair Rathain's prince would remember as dark, licked with silver, now gleamed snowy white in the rush-lit gloom.

  Turquoise eyes that bit like clear sky, the passage of years had not changed. Still fit in trim clothes, just as keen to provoke, the chieftain whose rule enforced old law in Selkwood searched the party of guests just delivered by the picked spokesman he had dispatched with his escort of scouts. That young man's rankled frown was expected; the other, a masterpiece untouched by time, walked in and stared at his host.

  Mouth hung open, he looked like a creature out of sorts with his natural skin.

  Less nervy, perhaps stockier, he peered upwards. The top of his seal head just barely reached the black pearl strung on the thong at Lord Erlien's collar-bone.

  Thrilled by the instinct that tagged easy prey, the High Earl of Alland hiked a booted leg over the table-top, perched, and extended his hand. The fingers he offered were sword-callused horn. The force of his grip strangled dignity.

  The creature he tried masked a desperate wince, then stood nursing his savaged forearm.

  'Nary the same welcome you've brought back to Alland,' the High Earl announced with contempt. His prowling glance already dismissive, he watched the rest of the royal party squeeze in through the grotto's entry. Two men-at-arms, the fat, puffing prophet once trained by Asandir, and another, whose face was alike to the one he had just abrasively greeted.

  Except this man's carriage was quicksilver and light, unchanged, after all, from the searing encounter over crossed sword-blades twenty-six years ago. Lord Erlien beheld the same vision: a grace that could murder packed into a diminutive frame that stood four fingers shorter than the replica standing before him.

  'By Ath!' The earl's beard cracked to a carnivore's grin. 'For a second I thought I could not tell the imposter. Does your half-brother know there are two of you? He'll split himself once he hears. No doubt that's precisely what you intend?'

  Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn smiled in the same feral vein. He paused beyond reach of that badgering wrist shake, though this pass, he was not cut and bleeding. 'The work isn't mine. The Koriathain wrought plans with my capture in mind, and the effect is unfortunately permanent.' He went on to introduce the stunned grass-lands herder to the most powerful authority in Shand. 'The High Earl bites with all of his teeth. The best tactic you have is to smile, then guard your back like the sting on the hornet.'

  'Runt insolence,' the High Earl declared, never laughing. First-hand impact of Arithon's longevity scarcely hazed his tough nerves. The eyes of the man, so different, were what vexed. Here walked a contained self-awareness to freeze heat, or stun silence from kindled aggression. 'Don't claim you've come back to grace my son's wedding.'

  'He would spurn my lyranthe?' Arithon's regard stayed wide-lashed and open. 'Then I've brought him red silk as a poor consolation.'

  'Sopped in how much blood?' Erlien shoved bolt upright and towered. 'You high-handed meddler! I called that raid off! For scratching the varnish on one of those tribute chests, you're asking to get my outlying camps run down and slaughtered for scalps.'

  That moment, an upsurge of commotion from behind, several jubilant scouts from the company shoved through. They all talked at once. The spokesman elbowed his randy fellows aside, also shouting to make himself heard through their clamour. The wild tale of the plunder on the Southshire road emerged in a cacophony of entangled phrases.

  Lord Erlien banged his fist and demanded the tale twice. Assured that no scout took a wound, and no head-hunters chased in hot vengeance, he bent his rampant displeasure aside and dissected the Master of Shadow, 'Iyats.' He coughed back an incredulous chuckle. 'That's novel. Ath above, you'll need worse. I presume you're informed of the grandiose scheme Avenor is raising against you?'

  'Every dazzling detail?' Arithon back-stepped, and reclaimed his sword from the custody of his blond liegeman. Head bent as his fingers rebuckled his baldric, he said, tired, 'I'm amazed there's a man or a woman alive who was born with the blind wits to swallow it.'

  Erlien grunted. His wrestler's arm reached the shelf where his papers were stored, fished through a sheaf of guild inventory lists, then drew out a state missive with ostentatious gilt ribbons. He passed over the document, silent.

  Arithon's features stayed blank as he read. The trapped light in the emerald set into his sword-hilt burned a baleful green, never trembling. He absorbed the last line, skipped to the flourished signature, then flipped the leaf over and perused the 'wax seals.

  'I should be impressed?' he commented finally. 'World renowned for foul works and mayhem, whether I practise suc
h doctrine, or not? A shame. Shown such vulgar taste, what man with a mind would scarcely wallow to seek further clarity. Sweet faith, bliss, and bathos, it's an execrable drama. Never mind that the theological concepts are glorified platitudes sprung out of lies.'

  'Why have you returned?' Locked in moist rock and gloom, that peremptory inquiry called due a past debt, left as a torn thread of iniquity: once before, Rathain's prince had asked the grace of an audience. That time, with no courtesy and no thanks for the law-bound gift of support, or the backing of Shand's steadfast clans, he had been uncivil, and slipped off like a felon to fight his campaign in the barrens of Vastmark.

  caithdein to a realm whose best strength had been spurned, the High Earl's demand brooked no apology. 'What will you do?'

  'About this religion designed for my downfall?' Arithon cast the creased parchment aside. The froth of sarcasm melted away. Bone and flesh, what stood poised was an initiate master, whose grasp of the mysteries was no figment at all, but the living grace of what lay at the core of clan destiny, and the very marrow of the Fellowship Sorcerers' guardianship. 'I intend to oppose this false god with every resource set into my hands. Survive or not, fail or fall short, I will stop this grand edifice of the Light and its splintering disillusionment.-If I can.'

  Lord Erlien weighed that claim through a harsh, settled stillness. Then he glanced from the prince pinned before his review and addressed the young clan scout dispatched as his primary spokesman. 'Kyrialt, would you follow this man's lead?'

  The vivid person revealed as the High Earl's blood son returned a spirited shrug. 'Father, the issue's a moot point. Because with polite disregard for your orders, in fact, we already have.'

  Arithon's gaze wavered. As though brushed by a fleeting instant of dizziness, he braced an arm to the wall in support. That moment, while some internal landscape threatened to shatter him like hollow glass, the High Earl of AUand made up his mind. 'Your Grace, I shall grant you the chance to address my clan chieftains. Let them hear you after the wedding. You won't find Orvandir's council complacent. They've had my consent to place ears in the towns. By my orders, last month, every courier bearing the sunwheel blazon has been stopped, regardless of cost.'