Blood in the Water (33 page)

“You don’t think those trebuchets will just pound my regiments into the mud?” Iruvain was shaking.

With fear or anger? Karn couldn’t tell.

“Your regiments?” Duke Garnot was losing his temper. “Those mercenaries took my coin before they took yours.”

“They thought better of that bargain,” Iruvain spat, “once you’d led them to a string of defeats. What right have you to command here? With barely five hundred men still wearing your badge!”

In fact, only three hundred still wore the boar’s head and only a hundred were sworn men-at-arms. Karn had made sure to ascertain that.

“Where are your vassal lords and your faithful militia?” Iruvain’s voice cracked. “How long before these townsfolk turn against you, just as they did in Carluse?”

Garnot’s slap across his face left Iruvain frozen with shock.

As Karn crouched motionless by the hearth, movement caught his eye. Two liveried youths stood in the doorway. One in yellow and green, one in black and white, both were aghast.

“What are you staring at? Find out what’s going on!”

Duke Garnot slammed the door and strode back to the broken window as horn calls beyond the entrenchments prompted fresh terror in the streets.

“How dare you?” Iruvain whispered with low fury.

Garnot ignored him, peering through the spyglass. “What are those grassland scum doing?”

His evident mystification threw Iruvain on the back foot.

“What do you mean?”

“See for yourself.” Garnot offered him the spyglass.

With both men’s attention occupied by events outside, Karn crept silently towards the smaller window looking eastwards along the town’s walls. Through the failing light, he could see mercenary horsemen wheeling and charging at the dark scars of the earthworks hurriedly dug in the grazing around Tyrle. He guessed they were launching lances and arrows at the cowering defenders.

Triolle’s raw militia would be pissing in their boots. But the sworn men-at-arms wouldn’t break, knowing darkness would soon force the horsemen back to their own lines. In the meantime, they’d keep their heads down. Archers on the town walls were already shooting at the enemy horsemen.

The bulk of their mercenary forces were safely entrenched beneath the walls, carefully placed to cover the militia’s inevitable retreat back through the town’s three gates. The Soluran had three men under arms for every two that Carluse and Triolle could claim, so these outer lines would have to be abandoned before their losses became too great.

On the other side of the scales, the mercenary cavalry Karn had recruited in Relshaz, with Triolle’s silver and the promise of Carluse gold, were safely within the walls. They’d ride out to ensure that retreat didn’t become a rout. Once everyone was inside the walls, the reunited army could hold off an enemy with twice the regiments. Even with these unexpected siege engines, Duke Garnot’s plan for holding Tyrle remained sound.

As long as the walls held against this bombardment. Karn looked up dubiously as shards of plaster fell from the ceiling.

“Why aren’t those cursed siege engines alight?” Garnot seemed to have forgotten his quarrel with Iruvain.

The younger duke seized his chance to point out the obvious answer. “They’ll have wet hides draped over the wood.”

Perhaps. Karn could see another possibility. Perhaps the Soluran’s engineers could call up magic to quench flames as well as provoke them. That reminded him of his earlier question. Why hadn’t the trebuchets’ first shots landed short among the militia beyond the walls? Or flown too long? Because wizards were guiding their flight directly to the walls and towers?

Karn stiffened. Amid the resonant crashes, he’d heard a louder calamity.

Duke Garnot had heard it too. “What was that?”

The inner door flew open. “Your Grace!” The youth was as white as the quartering on his Carluse surcoat.

Duke Iruvain rushed to the anteroom window, looking out over the town itself.

Under the westering sky, the town wall should have drawn a dark line between the Ashgil Gate and the Triolle Gate. An inferno raged instead, the tower ravaged like a lightning-struck tree.

Iruvain gasped. “Undermining!”

“How?”

Karn shared Duke Garnot’s incredulous fury. Digging tunnels to a fortification’s foundations took days. Packing the void with brush and hog carcasses, fired to burn away the props and bring the structure crashing down, took longer still. This had to be magic at work. No other explanation made sense.

“Your Grace, we must leave.”

“What?”

“No!” Garnot’s bellow overrode Iruvain’s confusion.

Karn ignored the Carluse duke. “This is wizard’s work, Your Grace. You must warn Draximal, at once.”

They would fight this magic. Karn had seen to that, by enlisting that renegade mage. But they had to get out of here first.

“I’ll kill any man who tries to flee.” Duke Garnot drew the sword at his hip. “Our captains will rally their men, inside the town and without. We will repel this assault and hold fast!”

“We will be trapped like rats in a burning barn.” Iruvain was too appalled to see his immediate peril. “Tyrle is lost, and Carluse with it!” He took a step towards the stairs.

Garnot’s sword was at his throat. “You’ll die before your cowardice costs me my dukedom!”

That was enough for Karn. He drew the narrow dagger sheathed lengthways inside his belt. No use against a sword, a joke against plate armour, it was sharp enough to penetrate Duke Garnot’s eye, long enough to lodge in his skull.

Garnot clawed blindly at his brow. He bellowed with agony as his fingers struck the dagger’s handle.

Karn wrestled the flailing sword from his hand and turned the blade on the young men-at-arms. The Carluse lad collapsed, decapitated, his blood spraying the disintegrating ceiling. The Triolle man shrieked in wordless terror as Karn buried the sword in his belly. Karn ripped the blade back, strewing entrails across the floor.

“Carluse! Treachery!” As Duke Garnot managed to call for aid, Karn stepped behind him, the sword-point slicing through his neck. Garnot fell in a crash of armour.

“He would have murdered you, Your Grace.” Karn flung the bloodied sword away. “He had nothing left to lose.”

Iruvain was staring numbly at the dead men-at-arms. “Why kill
them
?”

“Look at me.” Karn clasped Iruvain’s face between his hands. He pressed mercilessly on the bruise raised by Garnot’s blow and saw the pain cut through Iruvain’s daze.

“Who knows what lies they’d have told, to blackmail you, to dishonour Duke Garnot’s memory?” Karn stared unblinking into Iruvain’s white-rimmed eyes. “Better no one knows he lost his head so thoroughly that he was ready to do murder, Your Grace. Now, we must ride to warn Draximal’s forces. We must warn Lord Cassat that the Soluran has taken Tyrle through vilest sorcery.”

It was a roll of the runes whether the Draximal column or Triolle’s border was their closest sanctuary. But Triolle would be the Soluran’s next objective and Karn wanted Draximal’s forces drawn up along the border as soon as possible.

“We must rally the troops. We must hold the town—”

Iruvain tried to shake his head but Karn’s vice-like grip defeated him.

“We must ride for Draximal. Lord Cassat will recognise you, Your Grace. Any other messenger could be a feint, bringing lies concocted by the exiles. You’re the only one who can convince him to press on, to bring his army swiftly enough to save Tyrle.”

Hamare always said it was best to offer the young duke whatever argument or explanation showed him in the best possible light.

“Yes,” Duke Iruvain said slowly. “The captains here will know what to do. Sending other messengers to Lord Cassat will only cause more delay. It’s my duty to go myself.”

Satisfied, Karn armed himself with the dead men-at-arms’ blades. “We cannot stop to explain ourselves, Your Grace. Stay close and let me fight our way through the panic.”

He would have the advantage. He always did. Karn never suffered the qualms about killing that so fatally slowed most opponents. Dukes and nobles could talk about honour from dawn till dusk. He’d never understood it himself, any more than he understood what people meant by love. He just understood loyalty to those he trusted—Hamare, Pelletria and Litasse—and revenge on those who hurt them, even if he didn’t yet know all their names.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Aremil

Carluse Castle,

20th of Aft-Autumn

How long before they received news from Tyrle? Had Tathrin even arrived? Aremil longed to know but he was just as reluctant to seek Tathrin out in a battle. Distraction could be the death of his friend. Or Aremil might find him in the midst of something neither of them wished to share.

A blush warmed Aremil’s thin face. Had Tathrin any notion he’d seen him entwined with that whore in Relshaz? Aremil couldn’t tell. Since he’d learned of Carluse’s fall, Tathrin’s thoughts had resounded with his indignation at not being forewarned of Failla’s plan. Even her success did little to temper his ire towards Aremil and Reher, and even with Failla herself.

Ironically, whatever Aremil’s former doubts, her courage and commitment to saving Carluse from a massacre had redeemed her in his eyes. Whatever else he wished Tathrin couldn’t see through the inconvenient clarity of Artifice, he was glad his friend understood that.

Aremil sighed. It was his choice when to reach through the aether to Tathrin. Jettin had made it very plain he would initiate all Artifice. So when was the bold young adept going to tell him what those Dalasorian scouts based in Ashgil had learned of the Draximal army’s progress? The army led by his unknown brother, heir to the father Aremil couldn’t even recall.

He glanced up at the portrait of Carluse’s heir still hanging on the wall of this castle chamberlain’s office. Even in distant Vanam, he’d heard rumours of Lord Ricart’s arrogance, as well as Iruvain’s love of hunting and hawking in Triolle’s marshes. Such passing comment had told Aremil that Lord Cassat was well regarded, his courteous manners approved, his intelligence admired. His visits to Toremal were considered a valuable education and some hinted he’d been welcomed into Emperor Tadriol’s circle.

Aremil picked up a penknife to trim the quill he’d been using. He set it down again. His hands were shaking too much to be of use.

His faithful nurse Lyrlen always picked up gossip among Lescar’s exiles, eager for news of the home she’d not seen for nigh on twenty years. Always discreet, for fear of drawing attention to Aremil, for whose sake she had left her family and friends. Aremil paid more heed to Vanam’s scholars, to the quarrels and alliances around the university’s halls, and to news of Guild machinations in the lower town. Why risk exposure by enquiring about Lescari affairs?

Would he have wanted to live with all the responsibilities that the trials of his birth had denied him? Even for the sake of the luxury that Lord Jaras, Lord Ricart and Lord Cassat enjoyed? Hardly, and two of those noble lords were now dead. He was alive, if crippled. His house in Vanam had all the comforts he had desired. More, Branca had taught him how much less many folk possessed and still considered themselves fortunate.

This self-indulgence was wasting time. Aremil sorted awkwardly through a sheaf of letters but his weak vision refused to make sense of their scrawl.

Had Lyrlen forgiven him yet? For ignoring her advice, her tearful pleas, when he had insisted on risking his precarious health making the journey to Lescar. So he could play his part in bringing this brutal war to innocents who’d already suffered so much.

Had his brother committed any great crime? Not that Aremil had heard. His gaze drifted to the window. But Lord Cassat would be risking his life whenever Draximal’s army met Captain-General Evord’s. Doing his duty, following the honourable course he’d been taught.

Would they have been friends, him and his brother, if they had known each other as boys, as men? Would they have had anything in common? Would they ever have the chance to find out?

Aremil looked back at the flattering portrait of Lord Ricart. He’d never seen a picture of Lord Cassat. There was no reason why any likeness of Draximal’s heir would have travelled as far as Vanam.

The timepiece on the wall struck the fourth chime of the night. How was the battle for Tyrle progressing?

“You didn’t eat your supper.” The Soluran lieutenant Dagaran entered with a perfunctory knock. “Are you unwell?”

“I’ve no appetite.” Aremil shrugged his uneven shoulders. “The poppy tincture kills it.”

That was true, as far as it went. The journey south from Losand over the rutted forest roads had been agony. His cramps had been slow to fade even after they had taken possession of Carluse Castle.

“You should ask what Master Welgren advises.” Dagaran closed the door. “Perhaps he should remain here.”

“The captain-general will have far more need of him in Tyrle,” Aremil objected.

Dagaran nodded, his expression sombre. “True enough.”

Now illness among their companies was adding to their losses, as well as desertion, injury and death. Aremil looked down at notes he’d made earlier, dried blots like drops of blood. Ten dead here, a score there, such neat, round figures in Dagaran’s ledger. Yet militia or mercenary, every dead man was some mother’s son, a father, someone’s beloved. Brothers in arms grieved as deeply for each other as anyone did for dead kin.