Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga) (55 page)

“Unable to gaze upon your
handiwork?”

“You said you would know his face.
If you want him, you find him!”

Lasharia raised a hand and helped
Valryk down from the table and over the pile of White Mantles to his safe,
clean corner of the dais.

Lothiar glared down at Dashka.
“Don’t tell me Dathiel’s brother escaped with him. What about the War
Commander’s daughter?”

“Carah should be upstairs as I
ordered,” Valryk volunteered.

The avedra cleared his throat. “Her
room is empty, sir.”

Lothiar roared, stepped down from
his table, and strode over bodies to get to the breach in the wall. “And the
White Falcon?”

“Gone.”

“
All
of our primary targets?
Damn you, avedra! How did your kind ever defeat mine? You’ll end up on an
ogre’s spit, I swear to the Goddess! Has the city been searched?”

The Valroi fought to keep a measure
of calm in his voice. “We are searching now, but …”

“But?”

“But many won through the outer
breach.”

“Outer—” Lothiar squinted into the
darkness. Valryk wanted to look, too, but instead he edged away from the Elari.
He was soon glad he had. Lothiar whirled, bellowing some curse in his own
tongue and snatched up the first item at hand. The candelabrum was bent, but it
flew straight, striking Dashka full in the chest. The man dropped with a grunt.
Lothiar descended the dais, snatched the avedra to his feet and tossed him half
the length of the Hall. “Trackers! Get trackers on them. Wingfleet, lead them.
Bring the War Commander and his daughter back tonight. Not tomorrow. Tonight!”

The ice-eyed Elari saluted with a
fist to his chest and strode from the Hall. Dashka stumbled out after him.

A bright ray of relief ignited
inside Valryk’s chest. Part of him was pleased that even Kelyn had escaped this
horror. An ignominious death for such a man. Valryk hoped to offer him a better
one soon. “Should we count the dead?” he asked. “I can help you identify them.”
That offer was more than generous, he decided, considering how distasteful the
idea was.

Lothiar ignored him. He sank
wearily onto the edge of the overturned table. “Oh, Lasharia, I was sure I
would have one of the three avedrin after today.”

“I’m sorry you’re disappointed,
Captain. We have Bramoran though.”

A grin built on Lothiar’s face. “
‘Bramor.’ That was the name we gave it when we built it. Just ‘Bramor’. Yes, a
strong headquarters.”

“With all due respect, Captain,”
Valryk said, “I won’t have the seat of my empire overrun with those …
those
monstrous things.” He flicked a hand at the ogres. Fogrim and Paggon stopped
salivating over the bodies and pinned Valryk with cold reptilian glares. He
stood his ground. “I’ll give you the Green for that, but they’re not to come
inside the city or my castle again.”

“Indeed?” Lothiar glanced at
Lasharia, gestured with a jut of his chin.

“Sire,” she said, “let’s be away
from here, get some rest.”

Was he being dismissed? Valryk
glared between the two of them. Lasharia tried to take him by the arm as if he
were a child who had overstayed his welcome, but he stepped away.

Lothiar paid him no mind. “Fogrim,
fetch twenty of your denmates. Set them to gathering all the furniture, rugs,
and drapes they can find. You with me?”

The ogre nodded ponderously.

“They are to pile all those things
in here on top of the bodies.”

That seemed to confuse the ogre.
Valryk, too.

“What about eats, Cap?”

“Not these,” Lothiar replied. “And
never in my presence, you know that. Fill your belly with the horses they rode
here. If you’re good, I’ll give you a prize later. Agreed?”

“They eat the dead?” Valryk
demanded of Lasharia in an angry hiss.

“I’ve seen them eat the living,
too,” she said. “Sire, please, come with me.”

“No!”

“When those in the ballroom are
disposed of,” Lothiar went on, “you will add them to the pile of furniture as
well. Then I will light the fire myself, understood?”

The ogre’s shoulders drooped and
his heavy brow pinched low over his eyes. He didn’t like that plan. Neither did
Valryk.

“This is
my
Hall!” he cried.
“My throne room.”

Lothiar turned in a surprised
manner, remembering the Black Falcon’s presence. “Your Hall, their Burning
Yard.”

 “I forbid it!”

With long, casual strides, Lothiar
approached him. His grin was smug. “Bramoran was a long siege, emperor. Years
long. But it took only one battle, and you opened the gates. You have my
thanks.”

Valryk turned to Lasharia. Her
glance darted away.

“Yes, Bramoran is Lasharia’s
victory. Now for the rest of them, all the temples and castles that belonged to
us
first. Ilswythe was one of our holiest sites. It will fall tonight. Lunélion
will too, and Tírandon, Mithlan, Athmar, Arwythe. So many others. We will
reclaim everything that your kind stole from mine.”

Panic ripped through Valryk like a
scream through silence. “But the—the—the  dwarves!”

“What about them?”

“They drove your children to
starvation, they—”

“Oh, right.” Lothiar waved a
dismissive hand. “No, the dwarves were just a training exercise, and a
reckoning for my naenion. But this is
our
year. The Year of the Elarion.
A millennium is long enough to cower in hiding, don’t you think?”

“Lasharia?” cried Valryk, desperate
for a different truth, but she would not look at him.

Lothiar’s steel-gloved fingers
seized him by the throat. “Leave her be! She’s had a bellyful of your whining.
Her loyalty is to
me
, as it has been for a thousand years. She did
nothing without my order.
Nothing
. I ordered her to lure you with her
harp and a song. And that first night she spent with you? I ordered her to
return and fuck you. It wasn’t her desire to couple with a human, no, she might
as well have fucked a pig. It was
my
idea. All the times since? She was
under orders to do whatever it took to keep you close. How else to convince a
boy to sacrifice his wisest advisers and most experienced warriors?” Lothiar
dealt him a shove, sent him tripping over the mound of White Mantles. Valryk
crab-crawled over them. No matter where he set his hands, they slipped through
thick, cold puddles of blood. “You are
my
reckoning, dwínovë. You and
the Sons of Ilswythe and all your kind. A change of the watch, emperor. A
change of the watch.”

Lothiar’s words reverberated inside
Valryk’s head. Where was the fear he should be feeling? Buried under the
collapsing debris of lies and illusions. He pressed his back to the wall, his
hands to the floor, but his head kept spinning. Any moment Lasharia would kneel
next to him and pluck him gently from the floor and whisper a sweet balm in his
ear. Yes, that would fix everything. Just one word, one touch, and everything
would make sense again.

“Paggon, we have a room prepared
for our emperor, don’t we? Yes, the cell he likes so well. He’s even decorated
it to his liking. He’ll be comfortable there.” Lothiar pulled a chain from
inside his breastplate, laid it in the ogre’s enormous hand. From it dangled the
key to Valryk’s secret room in the prison tower. How did the elf get his hands
on it? No one knew where Valryk kept it. Only Lasharia.

He lurched to his feet. The ogres
stood between him and the main doors, and that older one with the big hands was
crushing bodies under clawed feet as he approached. Valryk fled through the
side door, past his secret parlor and the privies, and down the stair into the
kitchens. A shrill call from Lasharia chased him down the corridor. The
kitchens were empty. The ovens had gone cold; fish and vegetables laid on the chopping
tables gathering flies. Where was everyone? These weren’t the servants who had
been herded into the ballroom. Was the Captain holding them somewhere else?
Were they already dead?

A plan, he needed a plan. Get word
out of Bramoran, yes. He dashed up a service stair, and heard a crash behind
him. An ogre’s bellow echoed across the kitchen. Valryk ran the steps two at a
time, three, tripped and struck his shin on the landing. He cursed. No time for
pain. Run. What floor was he on? Didn’t matter. He shoved open an access door,
found himself in a parlor in the old part of the castle. Feet pounded and claws
scrabbled on the stairs. Valryk raced into the corridor, collided with a Falcon
guardsman. The two of them tumbled, and for an instant relief sang in Valryk’s
belly. But this was no Aralorri. No, he had ordered all fifty of his Guard
banished or slain. He wouldn’t risk betrayal, especially among those who should
be guarding his back. The irony seared. This Doreli mercenary who wore the silver
falcon dropped a sword as they fell, and the dozen household servants he had
been herding to the stairwell scattered, screaming. Valryk swept up the sword,
rolled to his feet, and lunged, burying the blade deep before the Doreli could
rise. He had never killed anyone with his own hand before. He watched the
Doreli curl up in a ball of agony, then go limp. The sight of it was
bewildering, empowering.

The crash of furniture in the room
behind him spurred him on. He dived through the nearest door. The queen’s wing,
he realized. Yes, his mother’s entertaining parlor with the harp standing in
the corner and the round tables for dice and tiles. Two doors down, her study
had been emptied of the small, sentimental brick-a-brack that she had collected
over the years. She had taken those things with her back to Rhyverdane. But
there were still parchment, quill, and inkpot in the desk drawers. In his haste
he dipped the quill too deeply. Black ink smeared his fingers, splashed and
puddled on the parchment as he wrote: “Cousin. We are betrayed. Bring your army
to Bramoran. Rescue—”

The study door banged back on its
hinges. Valryk whirled, poised the sword between him and the ogre, crumpled the
letter behind his back.

The ogre’s flat nostrils twitched
and snuffled. When he was sure he had found the right human, a grin stretched
tight over the yellow tusks.

“Well done, Paggon,” Lothiar said,
shouldering past the ogre. “Disarm him. Gently.”

Valryk feinted right, stepped left,
and brought the sword down in a hissing arc. The ogre raised an arm, and the
blade crashed into an armguard shaped of that rippling magic steel. The sword
burst. Shards of metal rained down around them. One bit Valryk’s cheek as it
spun past. The ogre’s hand cuffed him upside the head, no more than a casual
swat, but Valryk found himself face-down on the rug, his ear ringing, his jaw
numb, the taste of blood in his mouth.

“Valryk,”
Lasharia cried, crouching next to him, “stop fighting. Please, just do as he
says.”

With
a roar he surged up from the floor and drove a fist across her face. She staggered
back, and how dare she look startled.

Lothiar
seemed untroubled by the exchange. He had snatched the ink-smeared parchment
off the floor and examined it. “Hmm, this won’t do. Does your cousin recognize this
hen scratch of yours?”

 Valryk
wiped blood off his cheek. “Yes! Kethlyn will know if you forge something in my
name.” If his cousin had done as he order, Kethlyn was busy assembling
Windhaven’s militia. Seven days from today, he would send letters to each of
the holdfasts in Evaronna, raising their militias and garrisons as well, “in
response to a new Fieran threat.” The plan was to blame Valryk’s Fieran guests
for starting a quarrel at the convention, a quarrel that ended in bloody battle
and the deaths of two of the three kings. The Aralorris would have no trouble
believing it. They would demand war. Valryk would oblige them. With the help of
the Elarion and their “infantry,” Lothiar promised, the war would be short,
indeed. But if the plan was a lie, what did Lothiar really intend to do with
Kethlyn and his army?

“Yes,
that’s unfortunate,” Lothiar said. “Then write to him you shall. A different letter,
to be sure.”

“I’m
finished helping you! Never again.”

Lasharia’s
hand dropped from her swelling cheekbone. “You murder your father for him, but you
won’t write a letter?” She sounded desperate, afraid.

“That
was for
you
! Everything was for you! I killed my father for you! For a
lie! You’ll get nothing more from me.”

Lothiar
wagged a finger at him. “That had better be a bluff, emperor. You have only so
many uses left. If those are played out, well, I’ll give you to them.” His
thumb jabbed at Paggon. “I’ve seen them … dining, and they’re very thorough. If
that prospect isn’t frightening enough, we have other ways to convince you.”

“Even
torture is no inducement.”

Lothiar
chuckled. “Men have a tendency to say that until they feel the pain.” A sweep
of his hand ordered Paggon to carry on. “Take him to his cell. I will join you
shortly. Lasharia, have the Falcons dispatch the rest of the prisoners.”

The
ogre’s hands around Valryk’s arms were as strong and unbreakable as shackles.

~~~~

T
he banners of the kings still
hung from the wall in the King’s Hall. They lifted feebly in the breeze wafting
through the hole in the wall, like hands of the dying. Lothiar tore down
Aralorr’s black falcon, then the orange sun of Leania and the white falcon of
Fiera. He wadded them up and tossed them down with the bodies.

Hollow.
The victory was hollow without the Sons of Ilswythe lying at his feet. The
perfect ruse, the most elaborate lure, an opportunity wasted.

The
Doreli mercenaries dragged dead servants and squires from the ballroom and piled
them up alongside the bodies of the highborns. Fogrim and his denmates helped.
Whereas two humans carried one body between them, each ogre dragged two at a
time and dropped them into heaps upon a growing mountain of chairs, bureaus,
tables, velvet drapes, and rich tapestries gathered from the new wing. A pair of
Dragon Claw ogres wrestled an armoire into the Hall and dumped it
unceremoniously atop the corpses. Drawers slid out and crashed onto the tiles.
Linens spilled in fragrant cascades.