Blood in the Water (36 page)

Lord Cassat was still sending messengers out as he rode. Close by Duke Iruvain’s stirrup, Karn approved his stern orders for the Draximal horsemen. They were to cut down anyone fleeing the field.

Draximal’s fire-basket banner flapped overhead, the blue ground mocking the grey sky. Cloth of gold had been used on the heir to the dukedom’s standard, sparkling amid red velvet flames.

It fell in a garish blaze—real fire, not some devoted embroideress’s semblance. The youth honoured with the burden shrieked as his clothes caught alight, his hair seared away. His horse screamed with uncomprehending terror, bucking frantically to get rid of this horror. Flung to the ground, the young noble writhed, unable to stifle the flames as he died before his skin could even blister.

Karn jumped from his saddle, not to help the youth but to save his own neck as his maddened horse dropped to roll on the grass. Whatever viscous, burning liquid had crashed amongst them had splashed the wretched animal.

“Lord Cassat!”

Whatever his other failings, Duke Iruvain was a peerless horseman. He mastered his frantic steed with one hand, reaching out to catch Lord Cassat as Draximal’s heir toppled from his saddle.

“I can’t hold him!” Iruvain yelled.

Karn ran up to take the youthful lord’s weight, heedless of the stinking flames running down from Lord Cassat’s ear to his chest. The grass underfoot was burning, flames licking up the inside of his boots. Ready hands surrounded him, all desperate to carry Lord Cassat out of danger. One of the noble lieutenants dispatched his thrashing horse with a merciful stab to the heart.

“Water!” Someone thrust a leather bottle forward, hands trembling.

“Soak some cloth!” Karn felt as if he’d caught the heat of an opening furnace. His eyes were sore, his skin tender. He saw they had reached unsullied grass. “Lay him down!”

The man with the bottle shed his cloak, spilling more water than he poured upon it. Karn snatched at the woollen cloth, ignoring his stinging hands. It was barely damp enough to quench the fire engulfing Lord Cassat. The young man was gasping, his expression more bemused than suffering.

“Water!” Karn shouted. “Pour it on!” Bronze flasks and humbler waterskins soaked Karn as readily as the stricken lord.

Lord Cassat choked, his face darkening as if he were being throttled. His arms flailed wildly and then dropped limp to the muddy earth. He lay dead, even as his frantic retinue poured water, yelled for aid, or desperately besought every god and goddess’s mercy.

“Send for a surgeon!”

The milling Draximal nobles couldn’t believe their heir was dead.

“Duke Iruvain!”

That shout amid the lamentations made Karn look up. He saw a rider aghast at the woeful scene still with sufficient wits to seek out a commander.

“Your Grace, the Dalasorians!”

Karn fought his way clear of the uproar around Lord Cassat’s corpse. Following the rider’s pointing hand, he saw lances piercing the pall hanging over the Triolle Road. So the grassland horsemen had been hiding on the far side of the town. The fires started by the trebuchets had served to conceal their advance. And the brazen calls of the Soluran’s regiments were ordering a general assault from the other direction. They were charging forward from the Ashgil Road. Once again, Draximal’s army was caught in a deadly vice.

High up on his horse, Duke Iruvain shouted, “Sound the retreat!”

Draximal’s lieutenants stared at him with furious disbelief. They began shouting refusals, denials and vile insults.

“If we stand, we’ll be attacked front and rear and, who knows, maybe from the flank as well.” Iruvain appealed to the retinue’s sergeants, men versed in the bitter realities of war. “Retreat and we live to fight another day. Fall back and we can hold the line between the river and the hills till Marlier’s men and Parnilesse’s arrive. But we have to retreat now!”

He was quite right. Karn grabbed the reins of a riderless horse and scrambled into the saddle. Master Hamare would have been pleasantly surprised to finally see Duke Iruvain showing something of his late father’s mettle.

The sergeants-at-arms were following Iruvain’s lead. Those lieutenants not understanding their peril were roughly shoved aside. Horns sounded and flags signalled. The Draximal forces were already standing fast, swiftly turning from assault to defensive formations.

Karn took a moment to assess the situation. If the militia’s training held firm, as long as the mercenary captains recognised their companies’ best hope of salvation lay in strength of numbers, the Draximal army should be able to leave this debacle in fair order. The odds were good that Iruvain would survive, to bluster and justify himself.

Karn had other concerns. Ignoring his scorched hands and face, he kicked his horse into a gallop. The beast was only too happy to leave the tumult behind.

Master Hamare would never believe Lord Cassat’s death was some stroke of exiles’ luck. No unseen trebuchet amid the debris of Tyrle’s wrecked streets could have decapitated Draximal’s army with such a precise strike. Not even with the most eagle-eyed spotter on the walls relaying instructions to an expert engineer. Karn didn’t believe in luck, any more than he believed in the gods. The exiles’ cursed wizards had encompassed this murder, no doubt about it.

Very well. Karn knew a wizard as ruthless. He would make sure Minelas was ready to defend Triolle with the most brutal magic he could command. Once he’d ensured Litasse was defended, he’d ride for Marlier and for Parnilesse. However quickly this Soluran could move his army, a single man on a horse was always going to be faster.

He’d ensure Lord Geferin and Ridianne the Vixen brought their forces to bear as swiftly as possible, whatever promises, lies or threats that took. These exiles, who’d murdered Master Hamare and disgraced Duchess Litasse, who’d so nearly been his own death, they weren’t going to win this war.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Branca

Brynock, in the Lescari Dukedom of Parnilesse,

23rd of Aft-Autumn

There was a lot to be said for woollen stockings and flannel petticoats, a sturdy gown and a frieze cloak. Despite the chill wind, Branca was pleasantly warm, even if so many layers threatened to make her as broad as she was tall. This was currently a further advantage. It was no time to look pretty, nor even passably handsome.

The town was full of expectant mercenaries and sullen militia. Every woman risked their lust or resentment. From maidens barely blooded by Drianon to inconveniently fresh-faced grandmothers, women were staying safely within doors as much as they could. Those forced to go to the market hid beneath hoods and bonnets.

Any woman relying on a son or brother’s escort soon rued their mistake. Branca had seen youths too young to shave forcibly enlisted into Duke Orlin’s army. A baker had stood his ground, brandishing his flour-caked cap at the recruiting sergeant. He’d been released, but Lord Geferin’s decree had soon been cried through the streets. All the town’s linen weavers, potters and every apprentice were needed to defend the dukedom.

Branca wondered if the recruiter’s roving eye had noticed her sitting in the indifferent shelter of this wagonload of bricks. No one had come to claim it for two days. Was its owner reluctantly marching with Parnilesse’s regiments, a family out in the brickfields frantic with worry, not knowing what had become of him?

She must find somewhere different to sit tomorrow. Though she couldn’t readily think of anywhere offering such a good view of the bridge. Aremil needed to see the banners crossing the river. Tens of companies were crossing into Triolle’s eastern fiefdoms. The procession had continued all morning, men and horses trudging over the long bridge supported by twenty stone pillars marching across the wide river.

Branca noticed each company leaving a prudent distance between themselves and the next. Above the ancient Tormalin foundations, an ugly patchwork of differing stone and mortar marked the collapse of various spans over the years. Flat-bottomed ferries were carrying those unwilling to risk the bridge. She’d seen all the wagons transporting supplies for Lord Geferin’s advance entrusted to the boats.

A flurry of rain pattered against her hood. She ignored it, contemplating the river’s low flow. No aetheric magic she knew of could stir the waters, despite the storm rune figuring so strongly in the enchantments she and Kerith had discussed. They still had no notion how to use Artifice with the ferocity the ancient texts promised. Branca might just be able to shove some aggressive militiaman away, maybe trip a galloping horse, though privately she doubted it.

Could a wizard summon up rain to swell the river and bring down the bridge? That wouldn’t be using magic in battle but would it provoke Planir the Black’s wrath? She feared it might. Regardless, storms could turn the roads to clinging mud that would hamper their forces as direly as the Parnilesse army. The last thing Captain-General Evord needed was delay. Every league the exiles’ army advanced was another pennyweight in the scales towards their victory.

Branca shivered more with apprehension than cold. Aremil did his best to convince her that the campaign was going well but she was much more adept at reading his fears through the aether than he was at hiding them. Would brushing against Captain-General Evord’s thoughts give her some more hopeful insight? Branca had never been so tempted to ignore the masters of Artifice’s strictures, laid down in ages past and now reiterated in Vanam’s scholarly halls.

Was it really so wrong to look behind someone’s words into their unguarded thoughts? But what of the consequences for the adept as well as their victim? Branca still felt Kerith’s lacerating guilt over forcing his will on Failla, uncovering her desperate deceits despite all her pleas. Perhaps those strictures sought to protect adepts.

But what if those subject to aetheric enchantments never knew what had happened? She knew Kerith was pondering those stealthiest of enchantments woven around the Sea Breeze rune signifying the subtle southern wind. Would any of them ever master Artifice so completely that they could read someone else’s thoughts and change their mind, leaving them all unawares? If they could do that, couldn’t they just possibly end this war without any further bloodshed? Jettin might revel in battle and blame the dead on Poldrion’s whim but Branca was sick of slaughter, even seen through others’ eyes.

Her growling stomach recalled her to prosaic concerns. It had been far too long since she’d eaten breakfast. Time to return to the inn and see what was offered for lunch. Trissa would be there, even if Charoleia hadn’t yet returned.

From the shelter of her hood, Branca looked carefully around. Standing up, shoulders hunched like every other woman forced onto these streets, she mouthed the enchantment to brush aside curious eyes as she hurried over the litter-strewn cobbles.

“
Fae dar ameneul, sar dar redicorlen.”

Past the dairy market and the stone pillar where bulls were tethered for baiting on high festival days. Lord Geferin’s captains had turned the pillar into a gallows. Branca averted her gaze from the dangling corpse. Heralds had cried the man’s crime through the streets, condemning him for rape and murder. Such villainy wouldn’t be tolerated, they assured the townsfolk.

Branca didn’t feel any safer. The man had been accused but he’d been given no chance to answer before Raeponin’s shrine. Anyway, what consolation was a murderer’s death to a victim? Man or woman, young or old, they were just as dead. She ignored an alley offering a quicker route between a tailor’s shuttered shop and a shoemaker’s. This was no time to take a byway, even in broad daylight.

The shoemaker leaned on his door, a hefty cudgel beside him as he balanced the chances of turning some coin against the risks of dealing with mercenaries. He ignored Branca. This was no time to strike up conversation with strangers.

Not when Lord Geferin’s sergeants were hunting whoever was spreading such scurrilous rumours about Duke Orlin. Branca turned past the shrine to Dastennin. The Lord of Storms was widely revered in Parnilesse, with its long coast and the rivers defending both the dukedom’s flanks. The door had still been removed, like that of every other shrine in the town. Zealous beatings and Lord Geferin’s threats hadn’t stopped the accusing letters nailed up during the night. So now even Saedrin’s statue gazed solemnly through an open portal.

That was a tribute to Reniack’s diligence. Branca wondered whereabouts the rabble-rouser was in Parnilesse. Jettin was consistently evasive whenever she reached through the aether to him. They were busy shoving spokes in Lord Geferin’s wheels, that was all anyone needed to know. Branca saw the young adept’s fearful recollection of those caught in sedition. They were nailed by their ears to pillories or trapped in a set of stocks to be battered with merciless stones. Several had already died. Thankfully, Reniack was well used to evading ducal wrath.

Beyond that, the veils around Jettin’s thoughts were unexpectedly opaque. Branca wondered if that was why Kerith was so interested in mastering enchantments of piercing subtlety. He would want to know how Jettin had improved his aetheric understanding of magic, as well as finding out if the boy was hiding something.

Branca knew Kerith anticipated receiving the accolade of mentor once he returned to the university. Jettin wasn’t looking that far ahead. Always ready to defend Lescari blood back in Vanam, his passions burned twice as bright now he’d returned to the land of his forefathers.