Blood in the Water (39 page)

He looked around the music room, ignoring Pelletria standing silently in a corner. “You have my man Karn running your errands today, don’t you?”

“Yes, my lord.” Litasse wiped a careful finger along her damp lashes.

“I need him.” Fresh malice lit Iruvain’s eyes. “Duke Ferdain’s whore has proved as unreliable as all your kind, my lady wife. She’s marched his men as far as Marlier’s border and now she squats on her fat arse there.”

“I believe I can find Karn, Your Grace,” Pelletria said quickly.

He turned his ire on her. “Then send him to me. Tell him I want the truth of what’s happening in Marlier inside the next two days.”

The duke strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Litasse sat gazing after him. “What do you suppose that’s all about?”

“Marlier’s Vixen being so dilatory?” Pelletria looked thoughtful. “Or His Grace’s foul temper?”

“Either. Both.” Litasse turned to the old woman. “What do you make of his mood?”

“Our friends among his servants say he sits up late into the night, long after he’s dismissed his men. He paces and drinks till he falls asleep but he cannot sleep for long. Nightmares wake him sweating and crying out.”

Once, Litasse would have felt some sympathy for her husband. She would have believed it her wifely duty to ease whatever burdens so oppressed him. No longer.

“That won’t impress Lord Geferin,” she said grimly. “And we do need Marlier’s regiments to be sure of victory. Why has that cursed whore halted?”

“I’ve no idea,” Pelletria admitted.

Rising to her feet, Litasse went to the mirror over the fireplace, to make sure her tears hadn’t smudged her cosmetics. She caught her breath on a sudden thought. They had a new tool to hand, to find out what was going on anywhere else they might wish. She turned to Pelletria, suddenly gleeful.

“When you go to Karn, please give my compliments to Master Minelas and ask him to rejoin me here. Let’s see if his exceptional skills can shed any light on what Marlier’s Vixen’s up to, and what’s going on in Carluse Castle, and what’s become of my mother and sisters!”

Pelletria understood at once. “I’ll fetch your jewel case, the one with the diamonds. I imagine Master Minelas will need payment in advance for such extra duties,” she commented sardonically.

“Let’s see if his magic is sufficient to tell Aldabreshin glass from real gems.” Litasse didn’t care. The mage could take every gift Iruvain had given her if he proved useful now.

Pelletria frowned. “It’ll be a challenge to explain how you’ve come up with such information, given His Grace’s temper. But I’m sure we can think of something.”

“I think we’ll be amazed just how much Karn finds out on his way to and from Marlier,” Litasse said confidently.

Though even riding all night, he’d be hard pressed to make the trip and return with news fast enough to satisfy Iruvain in his current mood.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Tathrin

Ridianne the Vixen’s Camp,

Outside Skebban, in the Lescari Dukedom of Marlier,

25th of Aft-Autumn

“Quicksilver’s banner,” Gren remarked.

“And the Steelhands.” Sorgrad inclined his head.

Tathrin was careful not to catch anyone’s eye as he made note of both standards above the clusters of tents. An alchemist’s alembic was embroidered in white and grey on a blue ground while a clenched fist of actual metal plates had been riveted to black cloth. There was still no sign of a dog fox skewered by Marlier’s three swords.

Ridianne the Vixen’s encampment was easily as big as Captain-General Evord’s. It was far bigger than Skebban, the village clustered around the junction where roads from the south of Marlier headed north into Carluse and east into Triolle. Few folk wanted to live within a day and a half’s march of those borders.

Apart from the insignia, Tathrin found it very familiar. Each company had claimed its own patch. Fighting men and women sat outside their tents, companionably stitching leather, polishing armour and sharpening swords. The scents of oil and woodsmoke mingled with the faint reek of latrines.

Quartermasters’ minions tended their fires and ran errands for the cooks and the surgeon if their company was lucky enough to have one. The Steelhands did, Tathrin noted. He was grinding something in a pestle and mortar, just as Master Welgren did, joking with two old warriors retired to this safer life among the supply wagons. A handful of boys and girls played just beyond.

“There are children here.” Tathrin was appalled.

Sorgrad shrugged. “What of it?”

“Why aren’t they apprenticed?” demanded Tathrin. “Or learning their letters and reckoning somewhere safe?”

“You think everyone’s as lucky as your Failla?” Gren laughed. “There’s not one woman in ten on a muster roll who have someone to trust with their children.”

“Or have skills beyond their swordplay to provide for a family,” Sorgrad added.

“Should they drown their babies like unwanted puppies?” Gren taunted.

Sorgrad waved him to silence. “The Vixen keeps her own children close. That’s why she lets others do the same.”

Tathrin glanced at him. “What else do you know of her?”

“Enough to know she’s unpredictable.” The Mountain Man looked thoughtful.

They were into the inner camp now, passing between standards that blended Duke Ferdain’s blazon with each company’s insignia. Here, Marlier’s three swords framed a serpent coiled ready to strike. There, the blades were ranked above a blue shield displaying a bulbous brown toad.

Tathrin found it incredible they’d advanced so far unchallenged. But Sorgrad had assured him a mere three men, dressed like any other mercenaries, could slip into the Vixen’s camp.

Still safe within Marlier’s borders, with her scouts confirming Evord’s army was headed towards Triolle, Ridianne would expect each company to secure their own tents. As long as they did nothing to arouse suspicion, anyone seeing them would assume they belonged to some other company among the vast array.

That was all very well, as long as they could leave the camp as easily as they had entered it, once Ridianne knew who they were. Or had their luck just run out?

As Tathrin spotted the Vixen’s standard, four heavyset mercenaries headed straight towards them. All were fully armoured, with foxes’ pelts mounted on their helmets as crests. The masks’ hollow gazes stared above each warrior’s watchful eyes.

“Keep your mouth shut, long lad,” Gren advised softly.

Every mercenary Tathrin could see wore Ridianne’s personal badge. They all stopped to see what transpired. This far inside her purview twenty swords would skewer a troublemaker inside the blink of an eye.

“We’re here to see herself.” Calm, Sorgrad threw his hood back. “To present Captain-General Evord’s compliments.”

Seeing his yellow hair, three of the men drew their swords. Tathrin didn’t need Gren’s warning look to keep his own hand well clear of his blade.

The fourth man, his jowls dark with stubble, shoved his helm back to reveal shrewd eyes. “I’ll see if herself is interested.”

As he disappeared into one of the tents surrounding Ridianne’s standard, Tathrin saw more men and women gathering. He kept his expression as amiable as he could. Sorgrad placidly studied his fingernails while Gren looked around with a blithe smile that prompted a speculative murmur.

Sorgrad had assured Tathrin that word of so many Mountain Men fighting with the exiles’ army would have spread through every mercenary camp. If nothing else, curiosity should prompt Ridianne to talk to them.

Perhaps, but Tathrin couldn’t believe Ridianne would simply let them walk away if she declined to hear their message. He couldn’t help wanting to see Sorgrad proved wrong just once. Though not today, he decided. Well, there was always Sorgrad’s magic to save their necks. He swallowed the nausea that notion prompted.

To his relief, the grizzled mercenary swiftly returned. “Herself will see you.”

His companions stepped back as he led them to an open space amid the ring of tents beneath the dog-fox standard. The Vixen was reclining on a chair softened with embroidered cushions beneath a prudent awning. Her booted feet rested on a stool and a little table at her elbow bore a silver flagon ornamented with vine leaves and a goblet. Turning a page in the book she was reading, she showed no sign of registering their arrival.

She trusted her men sufficiently to relax unarmoured, wearing a black doublet and breeches, good broadcloth even if the colour showed every smudge of dust from the road. Somehow Tathrin didn’t imagine that concerned her.

Dress her in a sober gown and cover her cropped greying hair with a respectable shawl and she’d remind him of his mother’s elder sister, not so much in her features as in the severity of her countenance. His aunt had been a beauty in her youth, just as Ridianne was reputed to have been.

Tathrin’s mother said the love of his aunt’s youth had died in battle serving Duke Garnot’s father, before they could wed as they’d hoped. According to the comments around his father’s taproom, she had merely been too proud, too certain of her own worth to bend her neck to a husband’s bidding. Left a spinster, she’d nursed Tathrin’s grandparents through their last illnesses and now she occupied herself with the austere charities offered in Maewelin’s name.

Ridianne had married; Tathrin knew that, to a Caladhrian lord, who had died leaving her with no child of her own. Caladhrian law bequeathed every stick and stone, every pot and penny of his property to his son, sole offspring of his first marriage. Had Ridianne been such a harsh stepmother, Tathrin wondered, to deserve being dismissed from her home as soon as her lord’s ashes were cold, with only the mourning gown on her back?

That bumptious Caladhrian lordling had misjudged her. The tale was still told in all the taverns along the high roads. She’d cut short her russet hair and returned the next season with a troop of mercenaries to throw him down by force of arms. When he bought her off, she purchased a ruined manor house from Duke Ferdain, just across the River Rel from her erstwhile home. Within a few years, she’d earned her reputation as one of Lescar’s most formidable mercenary captains.

Now she sat before him, placidly turning another page of her small green-bound tome. Tathrin looked around. He couldn’t see her guards but they were there, no question. Who did she trust to overhear this conversation? The sons she was training to fight as hard and as fiercely as she ever had?

When did Duke Ferdain become her lover? Who had been the hunter and who had been the quarry in that chase? What did the duke’s legitimate sons and daughters think of the bastards he’d openly acknowledged?

Ridianne cut his speculations short by marking her place with a strip of tasselled needlepoint. Setting the book down, she looked up, hazel eyes bright in her lined face. “You have something to say to me on Captain-General Evord’s account?”

“We present his compliments.” Sorgrad smiled with the easy charm Tathrin remembered from their first meetings in Vanam’s drawing rooms.

“I’m flattered,” Ridianne remarked drily. “Please assure him of my admiration in return.” She reached for her book.

Sorgrad made no move. “Our captain-general is curious to know why you’ve called a halt here.”

“You’re Mountain born but that’s no Mountain accent.” Ridianne looked at him. “What’s your business, when you’re not carrying this Soluran’s messages?”

“I turn a coin wherever I can, with sword, runes or white raven.” He smiled ruefully “Though I prefer a feather bed beneath a weatherproof roof to a roll of blankets under the stars these days. I’m not as young as I was.”

Ridianne snorted. “I’m ten years closer to Saedrin’s door than you.”

“Indeed.” Sorgrad nodded sympathetically. “I’m not surprised you need a respite from the trials of your journey.”

Tathrin saw Ridianne’s eyes widen at this impertinence. To his intense relief, she laughed.

“I’ll march you into the ground, runt, and not miss you till three leagues later. But I won’t see our horses ruined through overwork.” Ridianne kicked her stool away and sat up. “Why are you really here? To spy out our forces? Let me save you the trouble. I’ve a few hundreds more men on foot than your Soluran master and I have my own cavalry very well drilled. Your Dalasorians won’t be the advantage you imagine.”

“No,” Sorgrad agreed readily enough. “But we’ll still beat you bloody.”

“So you say.” Ridianne’s lip curled. “Why should I trust your judgement? You haven’t even told me your name or any company that you’ve fought with.”

“Over the years, we’ve mustered with Arkady the Red, with the Brewer’s Boys and the Ast Maulers, among others.” The Mountain Man bowed politely. “My friends call me Sorgrad, and this is my brother, Gren.”

Tathrin could see no sign Ridianne had ever heard those names before. Then again, most mercenary captains’ expressions were as empty as a statue’s, whether they were playing runes, white raven or ordering an errant swordsman hanged.

Ridianne suddenly looked at him. “Who are you?”

“Tathrin Sayron, my lady.” The courtesy title was out before he could help it. Somewhere behind a leather tent flap, he heard a stifled chuckle.