Bonemender's Oath (7 page)

The woman led him past a series of dark oak doors, all closed, and showed him into a room at the end of the narrow hall. Tristan thanked her, but she merely ducked her head in return and scuttled off. Now there is a woman who is anxious to be somewhere else, Tristan thought. Afraid of her master, no doubt.

He entered the room, a library or study dominated by a massive, heavily carved table. Behind the table sat a man of medium build and sharp features. Tristan gazed at a face that might once have been handsome, before the thin line of the mouth had hardened into a look of perpetual displeasure, before the dark eyes had taken on such glittering, hooded craftiness. The overall effect was of barely contained malice, and Tristan wondered how André could ever have been gulled by such a creature. Then LaBarque rose, offering a bland smile along with his hand, and it was as though the menace and hostility had never existed. He shows me his
fangs, thought Tristan, but just a glimpse. Just enough to threaten without seeming to. The man was an actor, and a good one.

“Come in, My Lord,” said LaBarque smoothly. “So kind of you to honor me with your presence.” Tristan considered the outstretched hand. It was a gesture used among friends and equals and more than a little presumptuous in LaBarque’s case. Tristan hardly cared for such conventions, but there could be no doubt that LaBarque’s familiarity was deliberate. Let it go, he thought. A power struggle now might derail the entire discussion. He strode forward to greet the man—and LaBarque’s eyes shifted to the back of the room, his smile twisting into a snarl. Tristan’s skin prickled with alarm. He whirled about, and though his sword was drawn by the time he faced the three men who had stepped from the shadowed corner behind the door, a sword would be of little use against the arrows now trained upon him.

“Shoot him,” rasped LaBarque’s voice. “Now!”

D
ERKH
had never been so glad of the rising of the sun, though the morning warmth brought out a horde of buzzing, biting flies even worse than the mosquitoes that had tormented him all night. He hadn’t realized how pitch-black the deep woods could be or how dense. Expecting the same light woodlands he had seen around Chênier, he had struggled instead through a treescape choked with deadfalls and scarred with rocky outcroppings.

Wanting to escape the sentries’ notice, Derkh had avoided all paths out of the settlement when he left, planning simply to head north toward the foothills. An hour out of Stonewater, he had already lost all sense of direction, blundering through a land that seemed to pitch always at some violent angle, never running level. At first his own determination kept him from turning back. Soon, he didn’t know where “back” was.

He stopped now, arming the sweat from his forehead, and looked around. Pointless, he thought. Can’t see more than three paces in any direction in this ill-begotten swamp. He was surrounded by trees, mainly spruce and cedar, each with a circle of dead lower limbs thrust out like pike-poles. He had learned last night to walk with his arms held up to protect his head after catching one of these in the temple. Awkward, especially when he took a misstep and fell, but better than being blinded.

The trees glowered and pressed upon him. Never thought I’d miss those freezing plateau winds, he thought bleakly, picturing the sweeping vistas and open sky of his homeland.

Easing down on a log and rummaging in his pack for food, Derkh let his mind rest along with his body. The whispery voice of panic that had muttered to him in the dark was silent now.
Panic is fear run wild.
Col’s powerful voice leapt into his head.
Kill it, or it will kill you.
His father had certainly given him many chances to learn to overcome fear, Derkh reflected. Maybe those bitter lessons would save his life, after all. He closed his eyes while he chewed, tried to believe Col’s claim that a few moments’ rest were as good as a night’s sleep.

He knew what he had to do. He had to find a footpath—there must be some; after all, the Elves did travel this county—or at least a rivercourse, to follow. Otherwise he would never find his way anywhere.

He craned his neck, trying to sense the steepest slope. He wanted to get as high as he could, somewhere with a view so he could look for a break in the foliage that might indicate a passable route. It was a long shot, he knew. He might climb many weary slopes without ever finding what he sought. But it was his only shot, so he picked a direction, ignored the protests of his wrenched muscles and started climbing.

A
T
G
ABRIELLE’S INSISTENCE
, Derkh had not been questioned about the Greffaire plans, but on the march home he had overheard Tristan speculating and offered one opinion. “I doubt they’ll try again this season,” he told Gabrielle. “That was our entire invasion force. They would have to empty the internal security service to rebuild an army that size quickly. They lost a lot of equipment
too. I’d say if the emperor wants to continue the invasion, they’ll have to recruit and outfit a whole new force.”

“Your internal security service is the size of an army?” said Gabrielle, incredulous. She wondered if she had misunderstood Derkh’s accented words.

“We have a lot of internal security,” Derkh had replied flatly.

D
ERKH’S GUESS HAD
been accurate, as far as it went. But he could not have predicted the true state of affairs in Greffier.

The total defeat of the Greffaire army was met with black rage by the emperor. No one could explain how such a disaster had occurred. Of the few soldiers who straggled back, starving and exhausted, some raved with wild tales of ghost attacks, arrows raining from the sky and fell warriors materializing from the very air. Those who talked sense acknowledged there were none but Human foes, but still seemed confused about the actual course of events. They could not explain, for example, how the buffering front lines of conscripts had melted away, leaving the professional soldiers to bear the brunt of the fighting.

Only one fact was clear to the emperor, and he seized upon it: Col had had the advantage, and he had lost it. He had not pursued the retreating army immediately, and thus had given them time to summon reinforcements. The former hero of Greffier was officially denounced, his entire family stripped of their positions and plunged into poverty. Thus did the emperor deflect blame from himself and his policy.

Nor would he accept defeat. Was he not emperor? To build an empire, there must be conquest. His advisors and nobles, as usual, voiced no objection to his plans to raise a new army, this time under a commander “who can execute a simple order.” But some
exchanged dark, cautious glances, and many more brooded alone over the emperor’s latest excess. The invasion of Verdeau had been expensive indeed, and having financed the effort heavily from their own pockets, the nobility of Greffier were not anxious to refill both the royal coffers and the military barracks.

And where were the soldiers to come from? Men had already been pressed freely from the grain fields and cattle ranches that fed the country, and they had not been replaced. The harvest would be meager, the winter hard. Starving men, some muttered, make poor warriors. Before the snows had passed, the secret rumblings of alarm would flame into the first open rebellion in Greffier’s known history. Civil war, not conquest, would occupy the Emperor’s Guard come spring.

But that lay in the future. Now, the emperor demanded plans for a new offensive. His military tacticians and commanders—what was left of them—considered their options anxiously, and came to one cautious conclusion: they needed to know more about what had happened in Verdeau.

F
OUR DAYS OUT
from Stonewater, Gabrielle and Féolan were high in the Krylian foothills, well west of the Smoky River. They scanned the bare dry slope before them, looking in vain for some sign of Derkh’s passage.

Derkh’s journey through the forest had been easy enough to follow. With the help of a half dozen hunters and scouts recruited to check the outskirts of the settlement, they had quickly picked up his trail north from Stonewater. On the first day, even Gabrielle could spot the broken branches and scuffed loam—not to mention the odd dab of blood or “crash site”—that marked Derkh’s painful nighttime travels. After that, Derkh must have traveled
in daylight, for the trail became less blundering and more direct. Bewilderingly, it had led them straight up several steep hills and down again. Gabrielle had worried about this, picturing a panicky, irrational attempt to flee the forest. Then, after the fourth climb, the trail led them to a brook.

“Good thinking, lad,” Féolan had murmured as they followed the watercourse northwest. “He learns fast, Gabrielle. He must have spotted the break in the trees from that last hill and made his way here. Now at least he won’t wander in circles.”

By the time the little brook joined up with the Smoky River, it had become a rushing highland stream, and the two travelers could look back and see miles of forest falling away like a green ocean behind them. They were on the shoulder of the mountains now, and the trees and underbrush had become sparse.

Derkh had followed the Smoky River north until he found a place where he could cross it. He then headed west—or as nearly west as the rocky outcroppings and steep gullies of the land allowed. Once away from the watercourse, though, his trail grew faint.

“He could have turned west sooner and saved us all some trouble,” grumbled Féolan. “The traveling is easier in the lower foothills, and there’s enough earth to take a footprint.” The slope they stood on was peppered with rock shoulders and patches of loose scree, filled in with a dry tough grass that barely dented under their step.

Gabrielle scanned the horizon anxiously, as if she might actually catch sight of Derkh. “We must be close now, don’t you think?”

“Maybe,” said Féolan. “We lost time this afternoon, though—it’s been slow going. And now...let’s walk ahead a little and cast around on the far side there. But I’m afraid I may have lost him.”

Gabrielle held her arms out against the stiff wind that gusted across the hillside as she squinted into the afternoon sun. She had never traveled the high country. The long vistas unfolding before her, the crisp clarity of the air, the looming sense of the mountains rising over them—all would have been exhilarating if she had not been so worried. She was tired too—though she would never admit it to Féolan. Needing to make the most of the daylight, they barely stopped from sunrise to sunset, and the terrain was much rougher than the south Basin woodlands she was used to.

He glanced back and stopped and waited while she drew even. “Cheer up,” he urged. “Even if the trail is gone cold, we are not foxed yet.” She looked a question. “He is making for the Skyway Pass,” Féolan explained. “And I am no scout if I cannot get there faster than a lost...” He stopped abruptly.

“Did you hear that?”

Gabrielle nodded, eyes wide with alarm. The keening cry that floated in on the wind had stopped the breath in her throat—even in its faraway faintness it was savage with despair and pain.

They stood frozen, ears straining. Gabrielle knew enough not to interrupt the silence, though her mind swarmed with anxious questions. There, again—the hairs stood up on her arms at the sound of it. Gods of earth and sky, let that not be Derkh, she prayed. But who else would be roaming this wild country? No wolf or highland sheep had made such a cry. Gabrielle tried not to imagine the horror that might pull such an appalling sound from a young man.

Féolan was pointing just north of the prevailing wind, into the higher country. “Over there, I think.” He was already leading the way.

I
F
the assassins had followed LaBarque’s command immediately, Tristan would have been dead before he could even grasp the situation.

But they hesitated.

And Tristan, his reflexes still sharp from battle, seized the split-second of opportunity to act. He dove under the desk, toward LaBarque. He heard the twang of bowstrings, felt a stab of pain in his calf and another as he yanked his leg in under the desk. Tristan ploughed straight into LaBarque’s chair—and there was his one chance. He grabbed the front legs and yanked them up. The heavy chair crashed to the ground, taking the startled LaBarque with it. Struggling through the crowded space, Tristan lunged at the fallen man. His head bloomed into red pain as it crashed into the thick overhanging lip of the desk, momentarily blinding him. LaBarque cursed viciously, and Tristan scrabbled after his voice while the blackness receded.

Fighting his way clear of the furniture proved more difficult than fighting LaBarque. The man had managed to pull a knife on his way down, and Tristan’s sword was too long to manage in such a tight space. But LaBarque, though he knew his way around a blade, was no gutter-fighter, nor did he have Tristan’s strength. Tristan grabbed at LaBarque’s knife hand with both of his own and slammed it viciously against a chair leg—the weapon
clattered to the floor. It was the work of a minute to haul the man to his feet with his own blade against his throat. Chest heaving, Tristan eyed his three assailants. They didn’t look like soldiers or even criminals. They still held their bows, but uncertainly, aiming at nothing in particular. Their faces registered identical expressions of shock. It was clear they had no idea what to do.

“Curse you for idiots, all of you!” snarled LaBarque, and the three men seemed to shrink and bristle at once, like dogs that had been beaten. “You will pay beyond the powers of your feeble minds to imagine, that I promise you!”

“It’s over, LaBarque,” said Tristan quietly. Was it madness that drove this man beyond all reason? Tristan wondered if he even recognized his own defeat. “It will not be you doling out punishments hereafter. You are charged with the attempted murder of a prince of Verdeau.”

“A lie,” returned LaBarque promptly. “You have no witnesses. And I have my men here to testify that I was attacked in my own home without provocation, by a spoiled royal darling who doesn’t want to share his toys.”