Dangerous Waters (58 page)

‘Archmage!’ Zurenne sat bold upright.

‘I see them.’
Planir’s voice hardened.
‘Ely?’

A surge of voices from the mirror meant nothing to Zurenne. She stared aghast at the mob of corsairs who’d burst through the illusory ranks of horsemen. ‘They don’t see them?’

None of the corsairs had given the supposed troopers so much as a glance, let alone swung a weapon at them.

‘Not coming from the other direction,’ Jilseth said tightly. ‘At least they can’t see us either.’

Evidently. The newcomers were looking towards the manor house and their comrades clustered around it as if nothing lay between them on the highway. Some of the raiders broke into a run, gleefully calling in their unknown tongue. A share in such spoils was an alluring prospect however oddly the besiegers must be behaving to their unknowing eyes.

‘What happens when they trip over us? Will the spell shielding us break too?’ Zurenne gripped the mirror, demanding answers. The empty mist offered none.

A curious call, like that of a hunting horn but somehow not, was cut short. In that same instant, the blue magelight veiling them vanished. It flashed back into being in the next breath, even as Planir’s angry voice rang out from the mirror.

‘We will silence them!’

‘I’m sorry!’ Jilseth was more furious with herself than contrite.

Too late. The newcomers had glimpsed the Halferans cowering on the roadway.

Only for them all to disappear. The newly arrived corsairs halted, their confusion apparent even across such a distance. Zurenne cherished a frantic hope that the raiders might think better of approaching the site of such an unnatural apparition. Didn’t these corsairs shun magic? Corrain had said so.

Those besieging corsairs had persisted with their attacks despite undoubted enchantments shaking them from the manor’s walls. Zurenne discarded the captain and all his wisdom and broken promises.

It didn’t matter. While the corsairs were halted by doubts, the Halferans had seen those supposed horsemen waiting to rescue them. Even as the magic enveloped them again, Zurenne saw the relief on their faces as they turned to embrace and cry out aloud with relief, tears streaking their cheeks with sunlight.

‘Did you see?’ Master Rauffe slapped the reins on the carriage horses’ rumps. ‘An army from Karpis!’

‘No!’ Jilseth reached for his hand. ‘We cannot be scattered.’

Zurenne saw that some of the Halferan men guarding the column ahead had remembered Lord Licanin’s warning that they must keep everyone within the blue haze of magic. How grotesque it was to see them raise blade and staff against their own women and children with threats of violence born of their own pitiful fear.

Too many of the guards did the opposite. Reaching for their loved ones’ hands, they were running up the road. Some even discarded their weapons for the sake of catching children up into their arms, desperate to find safety amid the waiting horsemen.

‘I cannot keep everyone hidden from view!’ Jilseth’s despair rippled through the thinning blue haze.

‘My lady?’ Master Rauffe gaped at the vista ahead. As he dropped his hands, the horses seized their opportunity to escape the commotion swelling behind them.

‘Reven!’ Zurenne saw the young trooper’s horse leap forward.

The boy reined it back, not willingly. ‘My lady!’

He pointed, protesting, at corsairs running down the road towards them. Too many of the Halferans had already outstripped whatever remained of Jilseth’s magic. No raider would pass up such helpless prey.

‘Tell Lord Licanin.’ As the lad wrenched his horse’s head round and spurred for the rearguard, Zurenne pressed herself into the seat with braced feet and clung desperately to the side rail with her free hand. ‘Master Rauffe! Slow these horses!’

‘My lady, I can’t!’ He was hauling on the reins but the team were united in their determination to flee.

‘Are they coming up from the manor?’ Jilseth demanded, intent on the scene ahead.

Once again, Zurenne couldn’t tell who the wizard woman was asking. She answered for what little that was worth. ‘I can’t say.’

‘Galen!’
Planir’s voice rose from the mirror.
‘Let them into the manor.’

Jilseth gasped as if she’d been doused with cold water. Zurenne could only guess that was some consequence of the wizardry being worked around them.

‘They can see the gates are open now. They can get over the walls. They’re more interested in pillage than pursuit for now.’

For how long? Zurenne wished Planir hadn’t undermined his encouragement with those last two words.

Could those original attackers possibly be delayed long enough for Licanin’s men to cut down the raiders now holding the road ahead? Or could they simply force their way through? Some of the corsairs were spreading out into the pastures to cut down Halferans who’d abandoned the road in hopes of outstripping those blocking the way ahead.

Hooves pounded on the hard ground. Lord Licanin and his household guard appeared on either side of the coach. ‘Take the whip to them!’ he bellowed at Master Rauffe. ‘There are fewer of these vermin ahead than behind. We’ll trample them down and outstrip them!’

What of those left behind without horses or a seat in a wagon? Before Zurenne could protest, the baron spurred his mount onwards, his men pressing close. The remnants of Halferan’s household troop followed, Captain Arigo leading them onward with hoarse yells of encouragement.

Jilseth said something which Zurenne didn’t catch amid the noise. It sounded like an obscenity. Before Zurenne could speak, a more eerie magelight swirled around Licanin and his troopers. A cold grey radiance that none of them even seemed to notice.

‘What was—’ Before Zurenne could ask, she was horrified to see Jilseth slump on the seat, insensible.

The lady wizard fell heavily against Master Rauffe. His hands were full with managing the rebellious horses as the coach rocked and swayed, discarded possessions on the highway jolting their wheels. He threw Jilseth off with a heave of his elbow before he realised what he had done. She pitched forward, unable to save herself.

‘Madam mage!’ he cried, aghast.

Zurenne’s choice was no choice at all. She had to let the enchanted mirror fall to grab hold of Jilseth’s gown. Only her other hand on the seat’s rail saved them both from a deadly tumble into the traces and chains and the horses’ hooves pounding on either side of the carriage pole.

‘My lady—’ Master Rauffe thrust out a hand to help push Jilseth backwards. The carriage swayed alarmingly.

‘See to your horses!’ Zurenne managed to wrap her arm around the unconscious lady wizard’s waist. As long as the carriage didn’t overturn entirely, she and Jilseth were as safe as she could make them. Until the corsairs seized them.

She could only hope that Raselle and Mistress Rauffe between them were keeping Lysha and Neeny safe, tossed around inside the carriage.

The handle of the dagger which she’d demanded from Licanin dug into her side. She couldn’t spare a hand for the weapon. Would she be able to get into the carriage if the corsairs forced them to a halt? If she did, what could she possibly hope to do to defend her daughters from enslavement or worse?

Her hand holding the seat rail ached. Every jolt threatened to tear her arm out of its socket. She could barely catch her breath. All she could do was watch Lord Licanin’s men galloping ahead.

They had already forced a path through the terrified Halferans clogging the road. Now they spurred on to attack the corsairs, yelling obscenities with their swords raised high.

‘Slow this carriage!’ Zurenne yelled at Master Rauffe.

If he couldn’t the horses would soon be trampling the closest Halferans. Master Rauffe’s reply was lost in the commotion. She didn’t ask again. Like the terror-stricken families huddled together on the highway, Zurenne couldn’t drag her gaze from the skirmish unfolding ahead.

The numbers looked evenly matched. Wouldn’t mounted men have a decisive edge? That was some truism of battle which she recalled her husband mentioning.

Perhaps not. One rider was already surrounded. Captain Arigo. Zurenne cried out with helpless anguish. His poor horse was falling victim to corsair blades slashing at its forelegs and hocks. The animal collapsed, its screams tearing the air. The portly guardsman, so long loyal to her and Halferan, vanished amid a murderous Archipelagan throng.

Reven spurred his colt’s flanks bloody in a vain effort to save his captain. Heedless of his own safety, he set about the corsairs with crude sword strokes.

Zurenne gasped. Held aloft, all the Licanin and Halferan swords had shone bright silver in the sunlight. Now as their blades hacked downwards, inky darkness flowed along the steel.

Reven landed a glancing blow and the raider reeled away. Zurenne expected the barbarian to come back with a strike to be the death of the bold young trooper. Instead, the man stood frozen with shock. Even at this distance, Zurenne could see the lifeblood pouring from the Archipelagan’s wound.

‘Saedrin!’ she gasped, disbelieving.

That slash on the corsair’s chest was gaping ever wider. Inside a breath it was as broad as a man’s hand, glistening scarlet splintered with bone. The deadly gash ripped upwards, snapping the man’s collarbone so that his sword arm hung useless. Loops of bowel bulged through the blood cascading down his belly and thighs.

He threw back his head, screaming in unendurable agony. His shrieks ceased as he collapsed. As he toppled backwards, Zurenne saw he had been bodily torn apart. His corpse landed in the dust in two distinct halves.

She saw other raiders trying to flee and mostly failing. The slightest scratch from a Caladhrian weapon grew into a mortal wound before a man could take a handful of steps. The highway was a slaughterhouse of severed limbs and pools of blood.

‘Come on!’ Master Rauffe lashed the carriage horses into a gallop. He didn’t give them a chance to shy away from the carnage. The frenzied animals plunged onwards, straining to escape the horrors littering the road.

The way ahead lay clear. Any raiders who hadn’t suffered injury were scattering into the woods.

‘Onward!’ Lord Licanin appeared at Zurenne’s side, his horse lathered with sweat and spattered with blood.

‘Our people,’ Zurenne screamed, encumbered with Jilseth limp in her swoon.

‘They’re following,’ Licanin yelled before his horse outstripped the carriage.

With Master Rauffe’s bellows urging the horses on, they soon caught up with the troopers whose swords glistened with that deadly darkness. Lord Licanin’s guards clustered around him, grim-faced. The Halferans drew up around the carriage. Zurenne saw vomit on the shoulder of Reven’s chestnut gelding. The boy looked at her, his face a mask of misery.

‘We must find help!’ Zurenne held Jilseth close as she shouted at what remained of her own household guard. ‘For those on the road behind us! The faster we ride, the sooner we can send swords back to save them!’

The words rasped in her throat. Was there the remotest chance they would find anyone on the highway this side of Karpis Manor? Anyone other than murderous corsairs?

She fell silent as the men formed up to ride ahead of the carriage, a few falling back with Lord Licanin to guard the rear. Zurenne felt sick at the thought of those they had left behind to the raiders’ brutalities. She could only cling on to the carriage’s seat and save Jilseth from falling as they reached the debatable shelter of the woodlands.

This belt of woodland wasn’t a broad one, only there to serve the closest farms. They soon sped through it, reaching open farmland once again. Spiralling smoke smudged the horizon on either side, towards the sea and inland.

Zurenne ignored such tokens of misery. She was scouring the clearer sky ahead for any plume of dust kicked up from the summer roads.

She would have signed away every plough length of Halferan land, poured every coin from the manor’s strongroom’s coffers into Lord Karpis’s hands herself, in return for the sight of his liveried guards riding to their rescue.

C
HAPTER
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HIRTY-
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EVEN