Blood in the Water (32 page)

“I’ll see my family restored to Sharlac before I see Iruvain crowned High King,” Litasse said viciously, “and we’ll ensure Carluse and all the other dukes pay for abandoning their alliances with my father.”

How could she do that without a wizard’s help? Desperate times called for desperate deeds. Very well, they would see what use they might make of this wizard, when he eventually arrived. There were more urgent matters at hand.

She moved to the window to stare across the open bailey towards the Duke’s Tower. “Garnot keeps insisting his vassal lords are rousing militia to reclaim Carluse from this Soluran. Is there any word of that?”

“My man inside Carluse Castle says the Guilds now govern the town. They’re raising their own militia to hold the walls against Duke Garnot’s return.” Pelletria came to stand beside her. “There are declarations nailed to every shrine door for three leagues around. They say no one owes fealty to Duke Garnot since he fled the battlefield at Carluse Bridge. No one is tearing them down.”

“What of the lords who are wed to his daughters?” Litasse wondered. “Surely one of them must see Lord Ricart’s death opens the way for his own son to stand as Garnot’s heir?”

“I imagine they’re waiting for the others to stick their heads above the parapet,” Pelletria said. “If one gets a crossbow bolt in the face, that improves the odds for the rest.”

“That’s true.” And it was as true for dukes as it was for lesser lords. Litasse smoothed her skirts. “I don’t trust Duke Garnot. Can you get word to Karn, as quickly as possible? I want him to go to Tyrle, to join Iruvain’s retinue, if that’s where he takes Triolle’s regiments.”

“What’s your concern?” asked Pelletria.

Litasse shook her head with slow exasperation. “I don’t know. But Garnot of Carluse has nothing left to lose now. Hamare always said a man in such straits was never more dangerous.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Karn

Tyrle, in the Lescari Dukedom of Carluse,

20th of Aft-Autumn

As he came up the stairs to the anteroom, a few men glanced his way. They lost interest when they saw his Triolle livery. These lounging mercenaries weren’t interested in servants. It was the other men seated along the walls that they watched with veiled suspicion. If they were confident no enemy could scale Tyrle’s formidable walls, they still didn’t trust their allies.

Karn raised the lidded flagons of wine he carried as excuse for his presence.

“We’ll take one of those.” The commander of Duke Garnot’s retinue snapped his fingers.

“Captain.” Karn obediently handed a pewter jug to the closest man in Carluse black and white.

“We’ll wet our throats too.” Duke Iruvain’s captain gestured and one of his men took a flagon, stony-faced.

“Is one of those for us?” a balding man with a red surcoat over his hauberk asked from his seat by the door.

Karn knew him by the fetterlock blazon on his breast. Captain Jophen of the Locksmiths. He’d informed Duke Garnot that his promises no longer retained the company’s services after the retreat from Carluse and offered his men’s swords to Triolle. Now he sat with the hired captains who’d come up from Relshaz by sea and river, impervious to the contemptuous glances from Duke Garnot’s militia commander.

“Of course.” Karn had brought four flagons, enough for a sup or two for each waiting man, not enough to provoke the simmering ill will into conflict. That wouldn’t serve his purposes. As long as all three contingents watched each other with baleful suspicion, no one paid any heed to him.

He handed the third flagon to a man wearing a Moonraker’s badge before knocking on the inner door.

“Enter,” Duke Garnot barked.

As he obeyed, Karn saw Duke Iruvain’s jaw was taut with irritation. The younger man had had his fill of Duke Garnot’s overbearing manner on the forced march north from Triolle.

“Wine, Your Grace, Your Grace.” Karn bowed like a well-trained lackey.

“Thank you.” Iruvain’s expression lightened with recognition.

On Litasse’s instruction, Karn had taken pains to ingratiate himself with the duke, once he’d persuaded the former under-steward to flee Triolle Castle with a purse of Tormalin gold and assurances that no one else would ever learn the man had pilfered ducal liquor to supply his brother’s inn.

“Who sent us wine?” Duke Garnot growled.

Karn ducked his head, feigning nervousness. “Your reeve, Your Grace.”

As soon as the two dukes had entered Tyrle, the man had turned over these fine offices above the town’s main gate, as well as his own luxuriously furnished house. The pennies the man pocketed from every toll taken in the duke’s name plainly added up to a tidy sum. That was hardly surprising. Tyrle commanded the road coming south from Ashgil: the main route carrying goods from the Great West Road to Triolle and to those towns in Marlier and Parnilesse too far from the rivers for merchants to take advantage of barges.

Duke Garnot stalked to the window overlooking the high road, where the reeve’s clerks would have seen every trader’s wagon, every laden farmwife or peddler bringing goods to the market. “Tell him I want him here at first light tomorrow.”

“Very good, Your Grace.” Karn polished the already gleaming silver goblets with a crumpled cloth.

“Have they made any move?” Over by the hearth where a modest fire crackled, Duke Iruvain had donned mail and plate as soon as the enemy arrived. Unlike the Carluse duke, he still looked ill at ease in his armour.

“No.” Garnot was still staring out of the window.

Karn poured the wine. Frustration burned in his throat. Master Hamare would have sent spies out beyond the walls, identifying every enemy company. Duke Garnot and Duke Iruvain didn’t even agree on the count of the forces opposing them, each obstinately holding to reports already several days old.

Iruvain accepted his wine with a nod of thanks. “Dusk will come early.”

“What we want is more rain.” Garnot looked up at the sky outside, grey as the pewter flagon.

Two days of blustery showers had finally broken the long dry spell. Not enough rain to soak the roads and bog down the Soluran’s advance, Dastennin curse it, Karn thought. Still, lingering damp made the autumn cold more penetrating, nights in the open all the more wretched for their foes. That could be a few pennyweight in the scales once battle was joined, Karn judged.

Though Triolle’s militiamen would be suffering the same chill in their hurriedly dug entrenchments underneath the walls. Might it not have been wiser to keep them within the town, sleeping more warmly under cover? But Karn hadn’t been able to prompt Duke Iruvain into thinking of that for himself.

The duke thought of something else now. “What if they attack at night, like Sharlac?”

“The Soluran’s no such fool.” Duke Garnot scorned that suggestion. “They’ve been marching all day, probably through last night. We hold a town with defensible walls. They’ll camp and send skirmishers to look for some weakness tomorrow and probably the next day too. Then they’ll take a day or so to come up with some plan of attack, which we will naturally repel.”

“By which time Lord Cassat and the Draximal army will be here.” Iruvain joined him at the window. “And Marlier’s bitch and her curs.”

Karn knelt to quietly tend the fire. From what he’d seen of Tyrle, Duke Garnot’s confidence was justified. The reeve had assiduously maintained the walls and the militia garrison seemed well drilled and loyal. Karn guessed the reeve had generously shared the cream that he skimmed from Duke Garnot’s dairy.

Though solid walls and loyal guards hadn’t saved Carluse Town. Karn’s ears were pricked for any murmur of doubt. His daggers would silence such whispers. With Tyrle the last bulwark before the Soluran’s army could threaten Triolle, Karn would see every last drop of Carluse blood shed before it fell.

A shattering crash shook the tower. Karn choked on soot cascading down the chimney. Cold wind flung it around the room. Wiping his streaming eyes, Karn saw the windows were smashed, mere fragments of glass still hanging in the strips of lead.

“Poldrion’s black balls!” Iruvain crouched low, his face ashen. “What was that?”

“Siege engines.” Garnot looked out into the dusk, heedless of the cuts flying glass had left on his face.

Mercenary captains and dukes’ guards crowded in through the door, all shouting each other down.

A second crash deafened and silenced them in the same instant.

“Where was that?” Jophen of the Locksmiths demanded.

Karn realised that blow hadn’t shaken the gatehouse nearly so violently.

“To the west.” Carluse’s black-browed captain hurried to the broken window. “The tower between this gate and the one on the Carluse Road.”

“Are they intent on the walls or the towers?” Duke Garnot’s question was lost beneath the crash of another strike, this time to the east.

A chunk of masonry fell from the gatehouse’s battlements, landing amid shrieks in the street below.

“Trebuchets.” Jophen was peering through a spyglass.

“Man-powered or weighted?” The Carluse captain was the first of several to ask.

Duke Garnot snatched the spyglass from Jophen. “Counterweighted,” he growled. “Can’t you hear?”

Karn saw every warrior’s face harden. Men tired of pulling a siege engine’s throwing arm down. A box of earth and stones didn’t, and ropes and pulleys made light work of hauling the massive sling back down for reloading.

“But it’ll be dark soon—” Iruvain broke off, colouring with mortification.

Amid the hubbub rising from the town, awkward silence filled the room. Another strike on the wall towards the Carluse Gate emphasised what the younger duke had just realised. Once trebuchets found their range, engineers need not see their target to bombard it. Missiles were slamming into the walls and towers to east and west. How had they found their range so easily?

Karn lost hold of that thought as more men raced up the stairs. In Carluse livery, in Triolle colours, wearing a handful of mercenary blazons, they all shouted at once, bringing reports from the walls and the entrenchments.

Karn did his best to ignore them. Why hadn’t ranging shots landed short among the militia detachments out beyond the walls? Why hadn’t some of those first few missiles flown too long, soaring over the walls to demolish houses inside the town?

Iruvain pushed an excited messenger away and seized Duke Garnot’s elbow. “We must move from here. What if they start throwing sticky fire? Aldabreshin alchemy burned Emirle Bridge!”

No, it hadn’t. Karn cowered by the hearth, apparently terrified, calmly enduring a fresh fall of soot. Wizardry had burned the border town to set Draximal and Parnilesse at daggers drawn. Turning every eye away from the perfidy plotted by Vanam’s Lescari exiles.

Karn believed Duchess Litasse when she insisted the Soluran had suborned mages. She said they’d admitted it when they murdered Master Hamare in the very heart of Triolle Castle. Whatever Duke Iruvain’s suspicions, Karn would never believe Litasse had killed the spymaster. He had sworn she loved him and Karn knew the depth of Hamare’s devotion to her. Even if he found all talk of love meaningless, Karn trusted Hamare’s judgement. He’d trusted his life to it time and again.

Iruvain shook Garnot’s arm. “They can see our standards flying here!”

“You want to strike your colours?” Duke Garnot shoved the younger man away. “To give those Soluran scum something to cheer and put the fear of Poldrion’s shadow into your own men?”

Hamare had trusted Karn with his doubts about their duke. Iruvain had never been tested in battle as his father had been. Master Hamare had even contemplated fomenting some border skirmish, just to blood him, but the right opportunity had never arisen.

The floor quivered as more missiles struck the walls on either side of the gatehouse.

“Dastennin drown them,” Iruvain spat. “If we’d only had more rain!”

Karn didn’t waste time on futile regrets or curses for gods he’d abandoned as a child orphaned by war. He spat soot and disgust into the hearth.

Master Hamare would have sent spies to see what the Soluran’s men were up to, as they idled around Carluse Town’s walls. He’d have known they were plundering Duke Garnot’s forests and his quarries full of stone, to build these siege engines and supply their missiles. Iruvain hadn’t thought to, Litasse couldn’t and Tyrle was going to pay a high price for that error.

The Carluse messenger was still talking as the echoes of more booming impacts died away. “They’ll have the town ringed by dawn, Your Grace.”

Duke Garnot rounded on the mercenary captains. “Get your thumbs out of each other’s arses! Get every archer and crossbowman up on the walls. I want an arrow storm driving every engineer under cover and those accursed machines alight! Before the sun sets! Take every household’s stores of oil and pitch. Kick in their doors if you have to. Don’t come back till it’s done!”

The mercenaries were already leaving, Garnot’s bellows pursuing them down the stairs. He turned his attention to Duke Iruvain.

“Tyrle can hold until Draximal arrives. These walls are strong. It will take several days to make a breach anywhere and they cannot attack without overcoming our entrenchments. While they’re held at the outer line, we can mass our reserves within the walls to defend the breach. Then the townsfolk must be ready to barricade it.”