Lescari Revolution 03: Banners In The Wind (8 page)

'You need not fear for a woman's virtue around any uplander,' Tathrin said crisply.

Not counting Gren and perhaps Sorgrad, whom he suspected was an accomplished seducer. But they were far from typical Mountain Men.

'They hold all women in the highest regard,' he continued. 'Their sisters and daughters inherit the mines in the upland valleys, and the wealth of timber and furs in their forests. A Mountain Man proves himself worthy to marry by earning gold with the sweat of his brow.'

Which was why near on a thousand uplanders had heeded Captain-General Evord's call, intent on winning the price of a bride. Like the Dalasorians, the survivors were taking their spoils home before the worst of the winter weather.

'Those bones belonged to their fallen comrades,' Tathrin explained curtly. 'They wished to invoke Maewelin's protection, before their journey home. They call her the Mother, and Misaen, the Maker.'

He decided against any further explanation of upland rites. He was also grateful the Mountain Men had boiled down their dead on the battlefield at Pannal, to strip the flesh from the corpses in stinking vats, the easier to return the bones of the fallen to the valley that had borne them.

Halarey coloured as though he'd opened a hot bread oven. 'How were we to know? They barely spoke to us.'

'They barely speak our tongue.' Tathrin forced a smile before returning to the head of the column.

These green youths were barely capable of looking beyond Triolle to consider other Lescari concerns. It was folly to expect them to understand men so different in appearance, their very words incomprehensible.

Letting his horse pick its own way along the muddied road, Tathrin wondered if he would be as fearfully ignorant if his father hadn't sent him to distant Vanam, to escape Carluse's fratricidal follies and see the world beyond Lescar's borders.

His father was much of an age with Brimel's master, and Halarey's father. Those men had doubtless similarly spent their lives striving to protect their kin and property whenever their duke's bickering with his neighbours spawned open warfare, as disagreeable a fact of life as the seasonal pestilences carried up the rivers and along the roads. But Tathrin's home had been an inn on the Great West Road. Jerich Sayron was used to dealing with merchants and traders from Tormalin to Ensaimin and beyond.

Tathrin could only hope these youthful Triolle guildsmen discovered that their contemporaries in Ashgil muttered just as darkly into their ale, as resentful of all they endured for the sake of their own duke's lust for the empty crown of High Kingship. It could make scant difference to the common folk, whichever duke might succeed. In the meantime, they all paid the price.

Then he realised Quenel had a new bone to gnaw on.

'Is there any word from Parnilesse as to who murdered Duke Orlin and his family?'

Tathrin was repelled by the blacksmith's satisfaction at knowing Triolle's ancient enemy was so thoroughly cast down. Though that question needed answering. The sooner they proved Evord's men had nothing to do with the outrage, the better, not least for Charoleia and Branca's quest to placate Tormalin's Emperor.

'Marlier,' Brimel promptly asserted. 'Duke Ferdain hated Duke Orlin as surely as their fathers loathed each other and their grandsires before them.'

'How soon will the Vixen's mercenaries be at our throats?' quavered Halarey.

Irritated, Tathrin did understand the man's fear. Marlier and Parnilesse were larger, richer and stronger than Triolle. Dukes of both had sent armies to trample Triolle militiamen into the mud in generations past. More often than not they were merely taking the shortest route through the lesser dukedom to attack each other.

'Ridianne the Vixen fought alongside the Soluran's army,' Akaver the tailor reminded his companions. 'Duke Ferdain of Marlier cannot threaten us while she remains his captain of mercenaries.'

Brimel was not convinced. 'Until she decides to make a gift of Triolle Castle to one of her clutch of his bastard sons.'

Had that thought crossed Ridianne's mind? Tathrin wanted to trust the redoubtable woman, but he was guiltily relieved that her forces had taken such heavy losses in the battle at Pannal. She'd be hard put to challenge anyone for a few seasons at least. Though the question of just how to unseat Duke Ferdain remained a knotty problem.

'What do you suppose will become of Carluse Castle?' wondered Quenel the smith.

'That depends who the Soluran anoints as duke.' Brimel let slip a sardonic laugh. 'When he claims the High King's crown.'

Tathrin's forbearance snapped and he wrenched his horse's head around.

'Captain-General Evord will leave Lescar before Winter Solstice. He waged this war at the behest of honest Lescari, within these borders and in exile. He undertook to throw down the dukes because they have betrayed every bond of fealty in pursuit of their selfish ambitions. It's for us to determine--'

Before he could continue, horn calls rang across the barren winter fields. Startled, Tathrin saw his sergeants, mounted and on foot, rallying the men who had straggled out wide of the highway to avoid the ruts and puddles. The shouts sent his mount leaping forward, instinct telling it to flee. This was no nimble Dalasorian steed used to the chaos of battle.

Tathrin hauled on his reins. The horse bucked and reared. He saw armed men erupting from the coppices on the ridge line. Quelling his horse with a vicious clout behind its ears, he managed to draw his blade. 'Hold fast!' he snarled at the journeymen.

It was too much to expect them to charge these renegades. The first attackers were soon upon them, leather cuirasses filthy but steel blades bright and sharp.

Tathrin dug a spur in his horse's flank. Panicked, it turned Tathrin's unprotected side to the foe. Only the horse's skittish leap saved him from a slash to his thigh. Managing to wheel the animal around, he swept his blade across, very nearly slicing through the hapless beast's ears.

His attacker was already advancing a second time and Tathrin only just parried the renegade's stroke. At full stretch, his backhanded thrust had no strength. The renegade knocked it aside with a contemptuous hiss. Thankfully he had to dodge the frightened horse's hooves before he could follow up his advantage.

Tathrin gathered his reins and his wits and drew back to lure the renegade closer. Now he threw his weight into a downward stroke, with all the advantage of his mounted height. The renegade raised his sword but couldn't resist the descending blow and Tathrin's blade skidded down to bite deep into his shoulder. The man stumbled backwards, blood pouring down his arm.

Before Tathrin could pursue him, another renegade menaced. He let his horse swing its haunches around to force the man away. As the beast gathered itself to flee, he restrained it with harsh heels and hand and met this new foe's swinging sword with a clash of steel. He felt the blade bite into leather and flesh as he brutally spurred the baulking horse forward. The man disappeared under his terrified mount's hooves.

A body fell from a horse ahead of him. With a shock of horror, Tathrin recognised Brimel. The journeyman brewer clutched at his bloodied chest, his last petulant shriek cut short by death.

Men and horses jostled all around, blades slicing the wintry sunlight. Tathrin saw one panicked steed rear up to attack another with flailing forelegs, not understanding where the true danger lay. The stink of sweating men and beasts, of blood and terror, choked him.

Four men surrounded Akaver. One seized his horse's bridle, while the rest pressed too close for the youthful tailor to use the full length of his blade. He struck down hard with the metal pommel, gashing one man's cheek. Another had a dagger in his hand. He stabbed the tailor in the flank.

Before Tathrin could reach him, Akaver was dragged from his saddle to fall amid the renegades' savage blades and boots. As Tathrin charged, the four men scattered. His satisfaction at landing a blow, shattering the closest man's forearm, was momentary. Akaver lay dead, his bloodied face crushed like a trampled melon.

'Bastards!' Halarey screamed with incoherent fury.

He had either dismounted or fallen able to regain his feet. The baker launched a flurry of two-handed blows at a leather-clad renegade. Terror not skill drove his blade, but that proved enough to knock the man's sword aside and bury itself in his boiled-leather helm.

Ashen-faced, Halarey tried to pull his sword free. It was stuck firm in the dead man's head. Tathrin spurred forward and drove his own blade through the renegade about to attack the baker's unprotected back.

'Where's Quenel?' he yelled at Halarey.

The baker simply looked up, uncomprehending eyes white-rimmed with terror.

'Shearlings!' A tall man with a tawny beard shoved Halarey aside.

'Run or die, you scum-suckers!' A second man followed, wearing the same russet surcoat over his chain mail.

The renegades clearly recognised these newcomers' ram's-head badges, ringed with the rebellion's circle of hands. As more bellowing men surged forwards, the attackers took to their heels, disappearing into the coppices.

The mercenary sergeants would have pursued them but Tathrin saw the Triolle militiamen stumbling to a halt. They stared, appalled, at their butchered friends and comrades. Halarey dropped to his knees beside Akaver and shook the dead tailor's shoulder in a futile bid to rouse him. Tathrin had no comfort to offer.

'Not dead then?' Gren appeared on foot and smiling brightly. He was liberally spattered with blood.

Tathrin knew none of it would be his own. 'Where did they come from?'

Sorgrad rode up on his other side. 'You didn't think to send scouts forward?'

'Didn't the sergeants--' Tathrin broke off, appalled.

'You're in charge of this masquerade.' Sorgrad's merciless eyes narrowed. 'They take their orders from you.'

'Your boys needed blooding sooner or later,' Gren said impatiently. 'You've only lost the weaklings.'

Before Tathrin could answer such callousness, fresh chaos erupted down the road.

'Best assert your authority, Captain,' Sorgrad advised, 'before the Tallymen kill any more of your heroes.'

Tathrin saw the four sergeants he'd enlisted from that particular mercenary company had drawn together across the road. They were trying to stop Triolle militiamen from fleeing back the way they had come. Too many were evading them. Elsewhere, as their fellow militiamen tried to restrain them, individual fist fights were spreading into a widening brawl.

'Do you suppose the rabbits will stop at Tyrle?' Sorgrad mused.

Gren shook his head. 'They'll scurry back to Triolle, shitting their breeches every step of the way.' He took an apple from the bag slung at his hip and bit into it.

Tathrin's mouth was dry as dust. 'Help me rally them before we're attacked again.'

He desperately searched the trees for any signs of lurking foes. What was he going to do with the dead and wounded?

'We won't see those curs again today.' Gren's words were half-consolation, half-reprimand. 'That was a feint to test our strength.'

'They'll be back tomorrow,' Sorgrad warned, 'and the day after that. Now they've got our measure, they'll be snapping at our flanks all the way to Ashgil. Or until we turn tail and leave them an open road. That's what they'll be betting on now.'

Tathrin's fist clenched. He would dearly love to silence the Mountain Man but he had no argument that would do so. Besides, he wouldn't come close to landing a blow. The disaster of this first skirmish would have shredded the column's fragile morale. Seeing their captain knocked on his arse by Sorgrad could only make their dire situation worse.

He stood in his stirrups. 'Rally to your sergeants,' he roared, 'or run back home to hide under your beds. You won't be able to outrun your disgrace though. Every man who stands true will spit in your face for the rest of your lives, along with everyone else who learns of your cowardice!'

Amid the tumult, his shouts didn't carry very far, but at least those close enough to hear were given pause. Scuffles subsided as men looked at each other, shamefaced. Plenty of those further away were still running.

Gren munched a mouthful of apple. 'Let's hope we've got enough men to save Ashgil.'

'Is this how you uphold Triolle's honour? Is this the tale you'll take back to your parents? The legacy you'll leave to your children--' Tathrin broke off, coughing.

He swigged water from the bottle tied to his saddlebow. At least he could see the sergeants regaining some measure of control now that the first searing panic had cooled. More renegades lay dead on the dusty ground than he expected. Perhaps this wasn't quite the calamity he had first feared.

'You'd best have Aremil tell you everything he's learned from Failla, when you report this misadventure,' advised Sorgrad. 'You need to know what you'll likely be facing, so you can start planning ahead. Feel free to ask my advice, or any of the other sergeants.'

Tathrin rode away without answering. Otherwise he felt he truly would try to punch the Mountain Man. That really wouldn't be fair though. This debacle was no one's fault but his own. He turned his lacerating guilt on the wide-eyed Triollese.

'If you're so craven, we don't want you holding us back. Run and see if you can catch up with your gutless duke. Hide down whatever rabbit hole Iruvain's found!'