Falconfar 01-Dark Lord (22 page)

"Yes, and they have no warriors but hireswords," Dauntra agreed, anger sparkling in her great brown eyes. "And their loyalty is to the purse, not a realm or kin or family hold. I know a dozen of the lords of Taur by name and face, and would be known to them if I flew to their gates, but they'd sell their own mothers and daughters for coin, let alone friends and allies."

"And Sardray keeps to Sardray," dark-armored Lorlarra put in. "As their elders never tire of saying, 'What comes to the windy grass matters; what befalls elsewhere matters not.'"

"And none of the forest holds," Ambrelle said quietly, "have either the battle-might to make any difference, nor the will or strength to push through two lands to reach Galath." The senior Aumrarr stretched her wings, tossing her long, glossy mane of purple-black hair. "So Galath, as we all knew, all along, is the cauldron. If Arlaghaun rises to rule it unopposed, the rise of the cults will hardly matter; Falconfar will be lost."

"We must work against him, and hope Taeauna's man
is
a wizard, and we can turn him into a blade against Arlaghaun."

"It all comes back to the wizards," Juskra said bitterly, scratching at her bandages again.

"Always," Dauntra agreed. "Well, there're Four Dooms, and four of us. A fair fight, I'd say."

They laughed then, the bitter laughter of despair.

ROd's horse landed
an instant before he did, wherefore he smashed his face hard into its neck. Which pleased it not at all.

As he fought to stay on its back, and it reared and bucked and lashed out in all directions with its hooves, there was similar rearing and screaming all around him, amid much knights' shouting.

The air around him was a-shimmer with heat and thick with the sharp smell of smoke, but the flames had faded, and war-horns were sounding. The wavering forest of upraised lances ahead told Rod that Deldragon's knights were still on the road, three abreast. Lorn wheeled and shrieked overhead, but none were swooping.

"That's done it, for a time at least," Velduke Deldragon said with satisfaction from somewhere, near to Rod's left. To Rod, the man looked completely untouched; flaxen mustache as neat as ever, eyes still that serene and icy blue. "They hate fire."

"I'm not surprised," Taeauna said tartly, from nearer. "So do the horses, to say nothing of me. Have you anymore little tricks of magic we should know about, Lord Deldragon?"

"No," came the flat reply. "None you should know about."

"I see."

"Lady of the Aumrarr," the velduke replied calmly, "these are troubled times, and I have a duty to Galath and to the folk who dwell under my hand. To keep to the right road and do his duty, a man must do what he must do."

"Agreed," Taeauna said pleasantly. "Words to remember."

Rod had just managed to catch hold of both his reins and his saddle horn, and felt secure enough to risk turning to look at Tay and the Galathan noble.

And then wished he hadn't. The glances they were giving each other included polite smiles, but their eyes looked as if they were crossing swords to begin a duel.

A duel to the death.

"My best firedance
for the Lord Blackraven," Marquel Ondurs Mountblade said grandly, adjusting his new monocle, "and I'll have the same. Bring a large decanter, the old vintage, mind!"

The servant bowed low, spun around still in his crouch, straightened with an audible snap of dagger-coat tails, and hurried off past Mountblade's steward, who stood as still and expressionless as a statue, hands clasped behind his back, carefully out of earshot of seated lords.

Marquel Larren Blackraven had only just arrived at Mountgard; he'd still been clapping the road-dust from his hands when he'd been led up the path from the stables. Sighing in his ease, the tall, hooknosed young nobleman leaned back in his chair to look out over the trim green gardens falling away from the terrace. He hummed under his breath for long moments, as he turned his head to peer; Mountblade smiled silently and watched his guest.

To their right rose the weathered stone bulk of Mountgard, but directly before them the greenest lawns Blackraven had ever seen sloped gently down to pleasant clusters of spire-shaped evergreens, little bowers of winding flagstone paths, and beds of flowering shrubs cloaking sculpted stone maidens. Beyond their shapely, endlessly beseeching limbs gleamed the tamed waters of a smoothly curving stream; from where he sat, he could just see the curve of an arched bridge in the distance, spanning somewhere beyond the sculpted forests. Beautiful.

"Nice," Blackraven said at last, and meant it, as he turned gleaming emerald eyes back upon his host. "This must be a delight to ride home to."

Monocle gleaming, Mountblade smiled widely. "It is. Not the grandest gardens in Galath, and far from the largest, but mine, and well suited to me. The stream, in particular; I've had the banks sculpted this side, to make it perfect for strolling or bedding down with a lass, and I use the horse trail on the far bank every morn. Everything just as I want it. That's why the new wall; guarding all of this seems my best bet for keeping it. If battle comes, I don't want some ill-bred, motherless dog of a warrior galloping his nag through my beds, hacking at the trees as he fights off those who chase him, and winding up lying dead with his horse and a lot of others, tangled in the stream—just as rains come, so I get flooding!"

"Good thinking," Blackraven replied, rubbing the bridge of his hooked nose and nodding a little grimly. "Aye, I fear war is coming; strife that will purge Galath, cleansing our realm as never before."

Mountblade nodded glumly. "And tearing what it is to be of Galath asunder in the doing. Galath will never be the same again."

Blackraven stared at his fellow marquel, who was as young as he was, though the monocles he affected made him look older. He hummed absently under his breath for a moment as he considered what to say, and then shrugged. "My father said as much, and so did old Velduke Barrowbar, when I was a lad. The kingdom is always changing; none of us can ever have back the Galath of our youth."

"The king grows wroth more and more often," Mountblade muttered. "And titled folk who've not blood-sworn anew to him are down to... what? Three veldukes? A border baron or two?"

"Just one baron, now. Tindror, hard by the Arvale way through the Spires. He'll not last long. Nor, I'm thinking, will the others. We'll be summoned into the Presence soon, and mustered to arms by royal order."

"Hunting unbowed veldukes."

"Indeed. Yet so much is obvious, Mountblade; what has you worrying?"

"When all who might defy His Majesty are swept from the realm, what then? Will we be turned on each other again? Or sent against Tauren?"

"King Devaer does seem stirred by battle," Blackraven said carefully, "and why not? He seems good at it, no?"

"Ah, here's the wine," Mountblade said, by way of reply, seeing the returning servant slowly and carefully bearing a platter dominated by a gigantic decanter.

Blackraven turned to watch the approach of the firedance, and so missed seeing Mountblade collapse forward on his face onto the table between them, monocle clattering. Yet he would probably have failed to witness the fate of his fellow noble no matter which way he'd been facing, because he also slumped into slumber at the same moment, head lolling.

The astonished servant blinked and faltered in his measured stride, the platter swaying dangerously, until the steward stepped forward to deftly and firmly steady it and its oversized decanter.

"Wh-what has happened to them?" the astonished wine-bearer whispered.

"Worry not," the steward replied a little sourly. "I've seen this before. 'Tis magic. They'll wake in a moment, all afire with the same notion; whatever thinking a wizard's just thrust into their heads."

"What wizard? Do wizards rule in Galath now?"

"Of course, lad, but it means your death to speak of it. So, mind: I did not say 'of course,' but rather, 'Of course not.' Got it?"

The wine-bearer opened his mouth to reply, but ended up leaving it agape without uttering a word.

The two marquels awakened as suddenly as they'd fallen asleep, straightening without seeming to notice they'd nodded off. They stared at each other with identical smiles, brought their fists down on the table in perfect unison, and declared as one, "Galathgard it is, without delay!"

His monocle dangling, Mountblade looked at the steward and roared, "Horses! Full guard, to ride with me!"

"Y-your wine, lord," the wine-bearer offered.

"No time!" his master bellowed, springing up from his seat to stride for the nearest door into Mountgard, and thrusting the servant aside. "We must ride! We are required, before the throne, without delay!"

The steward, still nodding acknowledgment of his master's command, caught the decanter out of midair, even as the wine-bearer, the platter, and the two ornate metal flagons crashed to the terrace.

Marquel Blackraven was already up and out of his chair; he snatched the decanter from the steward's hands as he hastened to follow his host. The steward ran with him as the noble drained the decanter in one long, loud quaff, and calmly accepted it when Blackraven wiped his elegantly trimmed mustache with the back of his hand, still running hard, and handed it back to the steward with a great satisfied sigh.

Reaching the doorway just behind the visiting marquel, the steward of Mountgard snapped a stream of orders to the door-servants, handed one of them the decanter, and strolled back to help the wine-bearer up.

The younger man was still on his knees, retrieving fallen flagons and wincing over his bruises. He looked up a little fearfully to find the steward smiling crookedly down at him.

"And
that
," the older man said ruefully, "is how Galath is ordered these days. I used to think we lived in the grandest realm in the world..."

A
few lorn
were wheeling high overhead, like vaugren circling over something that had died in the open, but most of them had fled after Deldragon's fire burst. The knights had ridden hard and steadily since the attack, seeming to ignore streaming wounds, loose-flapping armor, and a handful of empty saddles, but a certain tension hung over the three riders at the heart of the long column of Deldragon knights.

Rod knew not what to say, and Taeauna had given Velduke Deldragon only tight smiles, and not a word of reply, since their words about other magic the velduke might be—no, almost certainly was—carrying.

This seemed to alarm Deldragon, who'd tried several times to begin pleasant converse, and was now stroking his flaxen mustache repeatedly.

"We're well onto my lands now, and very near to my home," he announced, as they started around a high green hill crowned by a banner-fluttering watchpost; a horn rang out from it, and was answered by the war-horns of the knights at the head of the column. "If I've offended you, I desire you to remember this: duty drives us all hard."

"Certainly, Lord Deldragon," Taeauna said warmly, rescuing Rod from silent helplessness.

Well, what does one say to such a large, handsome hero of a man? "Hi, I created you, glad you've turned out the way you did?" "You're certainly more impressive in person than how I just described you, in a few overblown sentences?"

"I am sorry if my reaction has discomfited you in any way," the Aumrarr said smoothly to the velduke riding at her hip. "Your dedication to duty is admirable; one of the rocks that folk must be able to stand upon and trust in, if there is to be any peace in Falconfar. You are quite correct in keeping your secrets and weapons ready but known only to you. I would do the same, were I riding in your saddle."

Darendarr Deldragon peered closely at her face, those ice-blue eyes intent, seeking any hint of mockery, but Taeauna gave him a real smile and the words, "Lord, I mean what I say. Truly. I am an Aumrarr, remember?"

"I believe you," the velduke said, matching her smile, "yet feel moved to comment that I have met sisters of yours before, and known both sarcasm and playful deceit to fall from their lips—very prettily, and not without cause, but with the shrewd power to wound nonetheless."

"Ah. Yes. I can speak in that wise, too, when moved to. I meant rather that Aumrarr deeply understand duty and dedication to it, given how our own lives are spent."