Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (57 page)

He paused as the two youths let their longswords hang slack by their sides, breathing hard and red-faced despite the cool, cloudy day.

‘Again,’ he ordered, relentless.

He would go to the Autumn Festival’s forthcoming parliament in Ferl with as well-trained and disciplined a troop as had ever accompanied any former Baron Halferan. And he would arrive there in good time to secure accommodation befitting his rank, however much of the Archmage’s coin that might cost. So these lads and greybeards only had a handful of days at best before they must all take the high road northwards.

The lads prepared to repeat their drill. The sour look they exchanged before they started didn’t escape Corrain. He forbore to comment in favour of renewing his assault on their swordsmanship.

‘Reven, get your whole body behind that second stroke, not just your shoulders. Linset, don’t raise your guard and then hold it there until he moves on. Turn the blade straight into making your counterattack!’

That was sufficient, he judged, to spur them on to greater efforts in order to prove him wrong. Any more and their response to his criticism would be mutinous and unproductive resentment. He took a step towards assessing the next toiling partnership with a sternly disparaging eye.

‘Eighth chime, near enough.’ Fitrel appeared at his shoulder before he could move on. ‘How long do you reckon to keep them at it?’

‘As long as it takes,’ Corrain said crisply. ‘Half a season handling nothing but chisels and draw-knives has badly dulled their skills.’

‘We all need a roof over our heads before winter,’ Fitrel observed.

‘So we will have.’ Corrain wasn’t going to be dissuaded from doing his duty, even if the pace of rebuilding had admittedly slowed somewhat this past handful of days.

He might have failed wretchedly in everything he’d attempted since his escape from the Aldabreshi but Corrain was now resolved to set all of that aside. Aye, up to and including the folly of playing the Archmage’s envoy in Solura.

No more of such distractions. Home was where his duty lay and he was determined to see the Halferan Barony’s reputation restored along with the manor’s buildings and walls.

He remembered something he’d realised he needed to discuss with Fitrel. ‘We need to send a troop out to ride the boundaries. We should decide who’s doing that and who’s coming to Ferl with me. The boundary troop will need to set out tomorrow or at latest the day after, if they’re to be back in Ferl for the Autumn Festival.’

‘Who will escort Lady Zurenne and Lady Ilysh back to Taw Ricks?’ Fitrel queried.

‘What?’ Corrain looked at the old man, caught off-guard.

‘Most of the demesne folk are still there,’ Fitrel pointed out. ‘Any celebration here or in the village can only be a makeshift effort at best.’

Corrain looked over towards the now roofed and weatherproofed gatehouse. Lady Zurenne, Lady Ilysh and little Esnina had taken possession of the upper floor, using the chambers that would become the manor’s guest quarters once the baronial tower was renewed and they could reclaim their rightful accommodations.

‘Lady Zurenne has said nothing of her festival plans.’ Though Corrain realised he hadn’t asked her. Their dealings were invariably of the past day’s progress and the coming day’s practicalities when they met to share a dinner in the gatehouse before he retired to sleep in his tent. Between such meals, they barely saw each other. They were all simply too busy.

‘If Lady Zurenne wishes to go to Taw Ricks, she and I must discuss her journey,’ he realised. ‘We’ll have to send some lad on ahead to warn Mistress Rauffe and Doratine to expect her. Where’s Kusint?’

He was rapidly becoming Corrain’s most valued sergeant. He hadn’t said how long he intended to stay, when he’d agreed to return to visit Halferan but Corrain knew he’d miss the Forest lad sorely when he decided to return to Solura.

If he decided to go. Would he stay if he was offered the guard captaincy? Corrain was seriously considering it. Fitrel had declined the promotion and in his heart of hearts, Corrain was relieved. The old man had earned a second chance at retirement and captaining a troop was a younger man’s task.

Granted, Corrain couldn’t think of any baron’s captain as young as Kusint. Perhaps he would find some opportunity to discuss the notion, in the most general of terms, with his former allies amongst the other lords’ captains at the Ferl parliament.

Though it was a knife to Corrain’s heart, whenever Kusint voiced his conviction that there must be some way to restore Hosh to Abiath’s fireside, once the old woman’s home was rebuilt. As long as he stayed, the Soluran wouldn’t let that lie, would he?

Corrain did his best to hide his own despair over ever seeing Hosh again. He knew that he relieved such tension by subjecting the likes of Reven and Linset to occasionally undeserved rebukes but it would do them no harm to learn that life was seldom fair.

Of late Corrain had wondered how he had managed to forget that particular lesson from his own childhood.

‘Have you seen Kusint?’ he asked a second time.

Fitrel didn’t answer. ‘What does that lass want with the master mage?’ the old sergeant mused instead.

‘Who?’ Corrain followed his gaze over to the rising walls of the kitchen and its associated range. Come the equinox, bakehouse, brewhouse and laundry should all be roofed and plastered and ready for refitting with all their necessities. Lady Zurenne had ordered a costly timepiece from some Relshazri artisan to be housed in the gable wall, to sound out the daily chimes for the benefit of all the household.

Corrain had expected to see one or other of the girls from the village. Those families who hadn’t fled to Taw Ricks were now drifting back as the manor’s renewal was proceeding. More than one of their intrigued daughters had flirted her petticoats at the Ensaimin wizard.

Instead he saw the lady mage Jilseth talking urgently to Tornauld.

‘Keep them training,’ he ordered Fitrel as he strode across the courtyard.

Corrain was still troubled by what Lord Licanin had told him on his return from Solura, of the growing misgivings about wizardry in Relshaz and the other port cities. Much as they needed magecraft’s assistance to secure shelter for the demesne folk before the winter, Corrain really didn’t want to see their neighbours’ attitudes to Halferan tainted by such reservations.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t grateful for all that the mages had done. He was also relieved beyond measure to know that he need no longer fear Soluran retaliation for his folly in enlisting Anskal. But now Corrain wished more than anything else to draw a final line across that ledger and look to Halferan’s future. A future free from reliance on wizards.

Fitrel had already picked up something of such uncertainty among the barony’s more distant folk finding some excuse to make the journey from their own villages to see the manor’s renewal for themselves. Corrain knew better than to disregard such tavern talk. So that was something else he must tell the guard troopers sent out to make certain that the neighbouring barons’ men were respecting Halferan’s borders. To keep their ears open to learn what they might of opinions on the Ensaimin wizard’s presence here.

To casually let slip in conversation that Tornauld was doing no more than any humble labourer’s work, for all that his magic could shift more bricks, wood and mortar before noon than a double handful of men could hope to move in a long day. Corrain was making certain that everyone from the neighbouring villages knew full well that the wizard couldn’t lay the bricks that were rebuilding the manor and its compound or cut the slots and tongues to joint the great hall’s new roof timbers together.

‘Good day—’ His greeting was left hanging in the empty air as Tornauld vanished.

‘Good day to you, Baron Halferan.’

Corrain immediately mistrusted the intensity in Jilseth’s expression

‘Where has he gone? What do you want?’

He could see heads turning all around the manor compound, as eager for answers as he was.

Corrain had one further question. Was Jilseth here to convey the Archmage’s reproaches for his failure in Solura? The northern wizards might not have punished him. He’d had no such assurance of Hadrumal’s forgiveness.

Every day, Corrain left his tent, waiting for Tornauld to pass on some caustic message from Planir. Every morning, as he woke and stared at the pale canvas overhead, he resolved when that reprimand came, that he would follow old Fitrel’s advice, given over a bottle of white brandy in the old man’s lost home when Corrain had first been raised to be a captain of Halferan’s guard. Never apologise and never explain.

‘What do you want, Corrain?’

He answered the magewoman’s unexpected challenge with equal bluntness.

‘To do my duty to my lost lord and his family.’

Jilseth’s smile put him more on his guard as she looked past him to survey the men at their sword practise.

‘Is Kusint still here with you?’

‘He is.’

‘We need you to fight the corsairs,’ Jilseth said with no more preamble. ‘The Mandarkin is drawing men and ships to join him. A handful of vessels have already gathered in that anchorage. The Archmage has no wish to see raiders return to the Caladhrian coast, to menace you all with magecraft as well as fire and swords.’

It was a cool day. Regardless, Corrain felt as though he had stumbled into the brook beyond the walls in midwinter.

‘You cannot—’ He was drowning in the horror of that prospect. Of all the fears that burdened him, this was the heaviest. The fear that the Mandarkin wizard would make good on his threats to Zurenne. The fear that innocent Caladhrians would once again be subject to robbery and rape.

‘I cannot fight Anskal!’ He swept his hand around the manor compound with barely restrained fury. ‘You recall his handiwork here? In that corsair anchorage? I dare say you have a far greater understanding of his strength than I do!’

‘Indeed we do and the Archmage has decreed that Anskal must pay the highest penalty for his crimes against wizardry. We will ensure that he does.’ The magewoman was adamant.

‘Then you can sink those ships and drown those men when you’re killing Anskal,’ Corrain shouted, not caring whose attention his outburst drew.

Jilseth raised her chin and squared her shoulders. ‘Magecraft has no place in warfare.’

Corrain had never hit a woman. He’d never been tempted to raise a hand to one. Now he forced his clenched fists inside his breeches pockets.

‘Go and tell that to the Solurans. Go and tell that to Anskal. When Saedrin turns you back at the threshold to the Otherworld, tell that to all those who died along this coast because Hadrumal refused to help them.’ He couldn’t help taking a sudden pace forward. ‘Tell my lord of Halferan.’

Though Jilseth paled she didn’t step back. ‘Wouldn’t you like to hack off his killer’s head and put it on the gibbet post’s spike out by the highroad? Wouldn’t you like to put the blind corsair’s head beside it, the old man who first rallied that raiding fleet?’

Corrain shook his head as though to clear his wits after a stunning blow. ‘They are still alive?’

How could that be? He had seen Grewa’s trireme burn to the waterline. He had seen the blind corsair’s pavilion reduced to dust and splinters. True enough, he realised in the next instant, but he hadn’t known for certain that the old man was either aboard ship or in that dwelling. The old villain could have been anywhere else on the island.

Corrain looked around the compound, picturing the destruction which Anskal had wrought here, all in the name of driving out those thrice-cursed raiders. Corrain had dug into the rubble with his bare hands in search of a black-haired corpse with gold chains in his beard. He hadn’t found the bastard before the Mandarkin’s sorcery had swept them both away to that accursed island.

He shook his head all the same. ‘You have no need of us. The Archmage can kill them all. As to your precious Edict, everyone from the lords in their parliament down believes that it has already been broken. They all believe they have Hadrumal to thank for the corsairs who died along this shore through Aft-Summer.’

‘Just because they believe it, that doesn’t make it true,’ Jilseth retorted. ‘We would much rather see Caladhrians reassured, to know that one of their own has finally secured revenge for Halferan’s dead lord. That a strong sword arm and the courage to wield it remains their best defence. The Archmage would very much prefer that a wizard’s talents are deemed best suited to hauling timber and serving stone masons.’

Her thin-lipped smile told Corrain that Tornauld had told her what he must have overheard. Corrain refused to feel ashamed for what he had done in Halferan’s best interests.

He shook his head yet again. ‘We cannot fight the corsairs.’

He gestured at the sweating guardsmen across the compound, their weapons slack by their sides as they wondered what was afoot, seeing their baron looming over the slender magewoman.

Mistaking his gesture, they hastily returned to their drills. Corrain was almost tempted into a smile. He shook his head, reclaiming his stern expression as he repeated himself.

‘We cannot fight the corsairs. I have barely enough trained men to curb banditry on Halferan’s roads.’

‘Then find more men.’ Jilseth was unmoved. ‘You only need a sufficient force to tackle five galleys and three triremes and all those are undermanned as far as we can see.’