Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga) (70 page)

Laral managed a tired chuckle. There
was no treachery here. If he was mistaken, let it come at the hands of a
friend. At a touch of the spurs, his horse cantered up the hill to the gate. He
didn’t care if the column followed or rested.

“The falcon made it, did she?”
Thorn asked, taking Laral’s hand and throwing an arm around his shoulders. “We
didn’t expect anyone for several more days. Honestly, I wondered if you’d come
at all.”

“Then twenty years has addled you,
avedra.” Though he supposed even his foster-brothers had cause to question his
loyalties.

Thorn had become hard and lean, his
face brown and lined, nothing like the shimmering bejeweled youth he had last
seen. “What the hell happened?” Laral asked. “Tell me about my father. Where’s
the king?”

“King, which one?”

“Mine!”

Thorn drew back from Laral’s
bellow.

The three mastiffs darted through
the gate so fast that he had no hope of catching them. His first thought was
that Moray had sicced them onto the Aralorris inside the palisade. But they
clustered around a single individual, tails wagging, excited yelps inciting laughter
that Laral heard too seldom. Arryk straightened amid the circle of joyful dogs
and waved. Had he smiled so happily and freely in years?

All of Laral’s fears lifted from
his shoulders. He sagged and sighed and sank to a knee. “We thought you dead,
sire.”

“Only for a short time,” Arryk
said, approaching. “But that’s no matter. Ah, Laral, get up. You’re
embarrassing me.”

Laral hoisted himself to his feet
and received an embrace from the White Falcon. “Kingshield said you would come.
I tried to believe him.” The same Kingshield who had said he wondered if Laral
would show up at all? Off to the side, the avedra grinned smugly. Even if Thorn
hadn’t expected Laral to ride so far, he would happily lie to spare another.
That much about him had not changed.

“And you brought my girls,” Arryk
added. “I thought Brynduvh was besieged. How did you…?”

“Moray brought them. The Mantles
escaped using the tunnels. He was ready to tear the realm apart to find you.”

Arryk winced. “That won’t do.” He
stepped out the gate and raised a hand. The Mantles charged up the hill, drew
up into formal ranks, dismounted, and saluted. Moray strode forward and bowed.
“Your Majesty. What a relief to see you well.”

“And unshackled, eh?” said Arryk.
“We are among friends, Captain.”

“As you say, sire.”

Arryk inspected the other Mantles.
“At ease, men. By the look of you, you’re too tired to stand at attention. I
commend you for risking your lives to find me. Come inside and rest. Laral,
your troops?”

“Eliad can put them where he wants
them.”

“Good, let’s talk. Kingshield, you
will accompany us.”

They started for the lodge. One
side of the butchered lawn was crowded with highlanders grunting and sweating in
a rigorous round of swordplay. Half the men stood on high mounds, the other
half in the ditches.

“Peculiar arrangement,” Laral
observed, pausing to watch.

“Training them to fight ogres,”
Thorn said. “Not sure how well it’s working, but it makes them feel better.”

“O-ogres?”

Arryk shrugged in reply, and Thorn
grinned. “There’s a nice bottle of brandy waiting inside for us. You’re going
to need it.”

A familiar voice bellowed an order.
The highlanders exchanged positions. Kelyn inspected them from the middle of
the sparring ground with his fists doubled on his hips. He leaned aside to
speak with none other than Lady Drona. She nodded at whatever he said, then
hopped onto one of the mounds and proceeded to give the highlander in the ditch
a sound beating.

Kelyn lauded her with something
that sounded like, “Well done!” then called a halt to the sparring. “Gather
round, men! Stop tickling each other, damn it! You think ogres are going to
play around? Start kicking some ass or go home! Lady Athmar, pick your next
man.”

She jabbed a finger down into the
crowd. “You! Front and center.”

Wide-eyed, Laral said, “I’m
dreaming.”

Grinning ear to ear, Arryk shook
his head. “Wish you had seen it. When those two old enemies shook hands and
agreed to terms…” He glanced aside at Thorn, then lowered his voice. “For one
instant I thought that maybe my father’s vision isn’t so farfetched after all. Westervael
could
be
, Laral. It was a moment I will not forget, though I’m probably a
fool to hope.”

This was a subject they had dared
not talk about over the years. Peace between the Brother Realms, yes,
certainly, but not unification. That was taboo, because it could not happen
without war or marriage. Arryk wouldn’t stand for the one, and neither he nor
Valryk had daughters.

“But never mind,” Arryk said. “You
have too many questions that need answering.” He led the way into the comforts
of the lodge. Thorn shut the door to the bear lounge, poured Laral a brandy,
and invited him to take his ease in one of the deep armchairs. Laral gladly
indulged, and then his ears began to burn with the words Thorn spoke to him.

When they emerged that evening,
Laral was so overwhelmed and sick at heart that he longed only to sit in the
dark and think and mourn, but by then news of his arrival had made the rounds. Kelyn
and Eliad hurried from a parlor across the corridor to greet him. “What kind of
defense do you have in mind?” he asked his former foster-lord.

“Can we discuss it over dinner?”
Eliad asked, rubbing his gut. “We’ve nearly starved waiting on the likes of
you.”

“I don’t think I can eat, Eliad.
It’s just too much. If I hadn’t been sick…” It would’ve been him bleeding out
on a marble floor, because those murdering bastards would have had to climb
over his corpse to reach his father. Andy would have been there. Laral dared
not send for his son now. He was safer where he was.

Kelyn nudged him. “Come sit with us
then.”

In the dining hall, someone put a
glass of wine in Laral’s hand. A highlander boy, it was, with blue and gray
woolen twine binding his copper-colored plaits. Why would Eliad take a
highlander for a squire? They didn’t knight their sons. Truth be told, he was probably
one of Eliad’s unclaimed bastards.

All around him, polite conversation
and laughter had a strained quality to it. People who didn’t like each other
tried to get along. Lady Drona and her nephew slipped by him without a word. At
least they didn’t try to hide their loathing of him. Her Grace asked him about
his grape harvest. The smile on her face said she wanted to hear only the good
news, so Laral replied with the generic pleasantries. Arryk talked philosophy
with Etivva, and neither avedra made an appearance. Carah and a raven-haired
girl arrived, fussing with pins in each other’s fancy coifs, as the first
course was being set. The highlander boy and a footman pulled their chairs out for
them. That was when Laral felt that something was missing. There was an empty
hole in the room and no one to fill it.

“Kelyn, where’s Jaedren?”

The chatter ceased. Faces looked
from one to another. Kelyn cleared his throat, opened his mouth to speak, but
Rhoslyn laid a hand to his arm. “I’ll tell him. It’s my fault.”

~~~~

K
elyn ordered the
highlanders to the training ground shortly before dawn. They were fierce
fighters but preferred a mug of ale and a hand on a woman’s tit to training for
battle.
Boggles
, they called those monsters that went bump in the night.
Boggles, those monsters they invoked to scare unruly children. The highlanders,
however, had long understood that something real stole their cattle and murdered
unwary travelers. A few even claimed to have seen these boggles or heard the
thunder of their feet.

The highlanders slept soundly for
all that. Far better than Kelyn did, at any rate. He had to kick and shout to
rouse them from their furs. By the time the sky began to pale, they had finished
their jawing, and the training yard rang with the song of steel. Because
Drenéleth was never meant to be used a fortress, Eliad’s armory was small,
supplied mostly with hunting bows and skinning knives, so the men trained with
real swords. Maybe that’s why they held back. Maybe that’s why they appeared to
be having fun, instead of swinging to win the sparring matches.

Panic threatened to choke Kelyn
worse than dry toast in the morning with no tea to wash it down. He was wasting
his time. And theirs. What good was training going to do them?

The aromas of bacon and baking
bread soon drifted from the kitchens. Eliad and Daxon ventured from the lodge,
working on their gloves, belting on their swords. Drona’s nephew tried to
emulate her hard hand—he was a knight, after all—but a young bull with red and yellow
plaits knocked him off his mound and onto his arse. Laral’s squire showed up,
too, and was given one of the few practice swords from the armory. Given his
youthful resilience, the long journey sloughed off him after only a short
night’s sleep, and he fared well against a highlander twice his size.

Eliad seemed to wear his sword this
morning for show. He stood nearby gnawing on a slice of bacon. “Don’t worry,
Kelyn. When it comes to a fight, they won’t back down. You’ll see.”

Kelyn shook his head, skeptical. “Your
highlanders are known for guerilla tactics, not facing an enemy in formation.”

“So why change that?”

Kelyn glanced around at his former
squire and decided Eliad had some sense after all. Who was the old dog here? It
was Kelyn who needed to learn new tricks, not the highlanders. His chuckle
clouded in the cold morning air. “I just wish there were five thousand more of
them.” Good fighters or not, these hundred highlanders wouldn’t last long against
the size of the army Thorn predicted. “Ogres breed young, they breed fast,”
he’d said. “Expect something like a million bats in a cave.”

“People will come,” Eliad said.
“Laral did. Others will too.”

What would Kelyn give for such faith?
The bloodletting at Bramoran seemed to have shattered anything in him that
resembled trust.

Maybe Eliad was right. He saw Laral
on the veranda, leaning on the bannister and glaring toward the southern
horizon. Thinking of home, maybe. Or wishing for revenge.

“I don’t think he slept much either,”
Eliad said, following Kelyn’s gaze.

“Would you?”

Eliad shrugged. Rhorek the Younger,
no doubt about it.

“Take over for me.” Kelyn trudged
up the path to the lodge, even though he suspected Laral wanted nothing to do
with him. “I trusted my son with you!” he’d accused. “I knew better than to
leave him here. You couldn’t keep your word to Leshan either!” Having that old
wound torn open stung worst of all. Had Laral held a grudge all these years?
Kelyn suspected not. “He didn’t mean those things he said,” he told Rhoslyn.
Didn’t matter. She blamed herself and cried till she fell asleep.

She would feel better once Kethlyn
arrived.

Kelyn climbed the steps to the
veranda.

“You don’t mean to train my men?”
Laral bit.

Sighing, Kelyn prepared himself to
take another bruising. The Brengarra militia still slept in their tents beside
the river. “They traveled hard. I thought it wise to let them rest another day.
Rest may be in short supply for all of us soon.”

A long, taut silence stretched out.
Jaedren’s ghost hovered between them. Kelyn expected Laral to stomp off, but he
lingered, and Kelyn took that for forgiveness. “Where in hell are they going?” he
grumbled at last.

Kelyn followed his glare toward the
stable yard. Thorn and Rhian wore robes and sword belts and saddled their
horses hastily. The Elaran blacks stamped their hooves, eager to break divots.
“Shall we ask?”

Thorn saw them coming but pretended
not to. If he wanted his departure to go unnoticed, he should have left hours
ago.

“Leaving?” Kelyn asked, casual.

“I told you,” Thorn said, tying his
staff to his saddle.

“Told me what?”

“Before I find you an ally, I have
business to attend to.”

“What kind of business?”

“Nothing you need to know about.
Stay here.” He mounted up. “I mean it, Kelyn. For your own good, stay here. If
you don’t see us in a few days, make for Avidan Wood, ask for Laniel Falconeye,
and tell him I sent you.” Without further explanation, he wheeled Záradel for
the gate. Rhian galloped after him.

“Hnh,” Kelyn grunted, watching them
go. Half a glance at Laral gave him the distinct suspicion that his former
squire was contemplating the same thing he was. “We wouldn’t be able to keep up
with them anyway,” he said, trying to talk himself out of it. It didn’t work.
He and Laral saddled up two of Eliad’s gray geldings.

“You know where they’re headed?”
Laral asked.

“I have a good idea. If I’m wrong
we’ll come straight back.” They tore off in pursuit. The bridge spanning the
roaring rapids of the Avidan steered them onto the southwest road that led to
Ilswythe. Each time Kelyn caught sight of the avedrin galloping up a hill or
across a long stretch of meadow, they had pulled farther and farther ahead. At
last they were little more than puffs of dust, then they fell from sight altogether.
Did Thorn really think that two avedrin could stand up against an untold number
of ogres? Kelyn supposed his brother wanted his library back. And he mustn’t
forget that the road that ran through Ilswythe Village was the grave of a
hundred Zhianese warriors. Kelyn hoped Thorn didn’t mean to open the earth and
swallow Ilswythe entirely. If his fortress still stood, Kelyn hoped it would
remain largely intact.

Near noon, Laral reined in atop a
hill that overlooked what appeared to be quiet meadowland. A stony ford crossed
a stream that meandered east toward the river. But a trampled mess of ground surrounded
the ford, as if a herd of cattle had been let loose to graze there. “Avoid
bridges and roads,” he said and turned his gelding into open country. Kelyn
trusted his judgment and raced after him.

The closer to Ilswythe they rode,
the more villages they encountered. Some had been burned to lifeless shells.
Others appeared to have been abandoned. Windows and doors were boarded shut.
Weeds grew in garden plots. Paddocks were empty of sheep and horses. Silence
replaced the laughter of children and shouts of merchants.

Shortly before sunset, a twinge of
unbidden rage tightened Kelyn’s belly. Fear settled across his shoulders, so
palpable that he reined in and searched the pastures for approaching danger. He
discerned no cause for either the rage or the fear. “Brother,” he muttered, the
realization taking the wind from the word. Thorn had arrived home, and he
didn’t like what he encountered.

“You all right?” Laral asked.

Kelyn gritted his teeth against the
rush of foreign emotions and cantered ahead.

Twilight descended. Forath reared
up over the Drakhans like a tyrant upon a throne. The darker it got, the slower
they rode. “I hope that storm doesn’t catch up to us,” Laral said, searching
the sky.

“Storm, what storm?”

“I heard thunder a while back.
Didn’t you?”

Kelyn swore and dug in his heels.
The gelding raced up the next hill. He reined in and listened. Yes, there it
was, the distant growl of thunder. A white spark flashed in the middle of the
dark flow of land below; a few seconds later another grumble echoed past.

“They could use our help.” Laral’s
suggestion sounded less confident than perhaps he meant it to.

“No. We should have done as Thorn
said. We don’t belong here.” From this distance, Ilswythe’s walls and towers easily
fit in the palm of his hand. Close enough. He dismounted under a stand of young
andyr trees and tethered the gelding. A space between knotted roots provided a
comfortable seat while he watched the light show.

Laral paced, however. “Maybe
someone down there knows what happened to my boy. I hope one of them finds us.
I’ll cut the answer out of him. You think somebody down there knows? Somebody
has to.” It wasn’t like him to lose his quiet composure.

“Two nights without sleep, Laral?
Get some shut-eye. War Commander’s order. I might need you lucid tomorrow.”

It took some convincing, but
eventually Laral settled down. Kelyn dozed occasionally, too, head pillowed
against the bark of the andyr, ears filled with the drone and snap of thunder.
Each time he woke, he glanced eastward for the dawn. But Forath’s scared face
rolled damnably slow across the sky. His ruddy light turned the Avidan into a
bleeding gash on the black breast of the benighted hills.

Just as the sky began to pale, the
air grew still. A long silence drew out, more terrifying than the thunder ever
was. Kelyn felt for the tension in his belly. The fear was gone, but the rage
remained. Fainter now, but present. His brother still lived.

Kelyn nudged Laral’s shoulder and
woke him. “I think it’s over. Be watching for them. If all is well, we ought to
see them riding along the road there.” He pointed at the north gatehouse where
the Drenéleth road ended. In the gray light, little appeared to be amiss. Ilswythe’s
towers still stood, roofs intact. Across the river, Kelyn saw little but a
blackened ruin.

They waited and watched. Waited and
watched. Neither Thorn nor Rhian appeared on the roadway. Midmorning, Laral
asked, “Think they’ve been captured?”

Kelyn’s greatest concern. How to
sneak in and find out? He had done well to keep trees and shrubs from growing
close to the fortress. Highwaymen, spies, thieves, and assassins had not a
scrap of cover within a hundred yards of the walls. Why couldn’t he have been
the slightest bit neglectful? A few trees shaded the western end of the
racetrack to provide shade for spectators. “We’ll shelter the horses there,
then stick close to the shadows under the west wall. Maybe a sentry will be
looking farther afield and miss us.”

“We’ll be seen before we reach the
racetrack,” Laral argued.

Kelyn rounded on him. “You have a
better idea? We could use the tunnel, but the entrance is in Bransdon, a couple
miles back, and Rhoslyn said that end had collapsed completely. If you think
you can find the tree that marks the place where she climbed out, do so.”

“Ilswythe has tunnels?” Laral looked
confused. Rhoslyn hadn’t bothered with that part of the story.

“Forget it. Those trees are out of
bowshot. If we hear an alarm we’ll turn tail and race for Bransdon.”

They mounted up and urged their
horses to a quick trot. Soft ground and wind in the grass muffled the sound of
their approach. They kept an eye on the battlements. Kelyn glimpsed not one
sentry. An eerie silence resonated from the towers, but a strange banner flew
from the roof of his keep. A red-orange axe flapped on the pale canvas.

They reached the stand of trees
unchallenged. The north gate appeared to have been bashed in. Rubble that
looked suspiciously like furniture and roof beams shored it up. Kelyn suspected
the main gate looked much the same, unless the avedrin had blasted their way through.

“Where are these terrifying ogres?”
Laral asked, walking up the hill. There seemed to be no need to hurry or to hide.

“Maybe it’s lunchtime. Don’t get
cocky.” Kelyn pressed his back to the cool stones of the western wall and
inched ahead, keeping to the shadows.

They encountered the first corpse
as they rounded the barracks tower. Crumpled and twisted, the ogre appeared to
have fallen from the battlements. The mottled green skin faded to gray in
death. A warted muzzle drooped open, revealing rotting teeth and long yellow
tusks. Red eyes rolled back in deep sockets. An axe lay in the beast’s broken
fist, but the blade was clean. Laral examined the body and covered his nose
against the reek.

“Terrified yet?”

“But, Kelyn, it’s huge!”

“Did you think we were
exaggerating? Keep moving.”

The number of bodies mounted as
they neared the main gate. Many had tell-tale holes seared through their armor.
Others appeared to have been tossed and broken like toys made of sticks. The
confines of the gatehouse had provided a bottleneck. Kelyn had no choice but to
climb over the heaps of bodies. The courtyard was little different. Swaths of
gray-green corpses covered the cobbles, contorted by avedra lightning, burned
by blasts of fire. The stench of rotting meat, scorched flesh, blood and shit
made Kelyn’s stomach turn. He threw a forearm across his mouth to block the
worst of it.

He couldn’t find a path between the
twisted limbs and puddles of gore to reach the doors of the keep. Just like in
a nightmare. That’s what this was, and there was no waking from it.

He searched for signs of movement
in the bailey, in the windows. Some of the glass had shattered. Most of the workshops
and barns under the east wall had been torn down. Their beams and timbers,
then, were what shored up the broken gates.

“Look,” Laral said pointing at the
roof of the keep.

The foreign banner was gone.

“Thorn?” cried Kelyn. He weaved
across the courtyard faster now, not allowing himself to care what he stepped
on.