The Bloody Quarrel (The Complete Edition) (37 page)

“I am Captain Fallon. You may have heard of me. I was the man who gutted King Aidan in front of a cheering crowd,” the captain said.

Rossmore felt faint and held onto his bladder only with the greatest of difficulty. “I have heard of you,” he whispered.

“Either you help us or people will stop whispering about how I killed that foul King and start talking about what I did to an unfortunate Count.”

Rossmore looked into the implacable eyes and had to clear a dry throat before he could speak. “What do you need?” he whimpered.

Fallon dragged him along towards his study. “To find out what you have been up to.”

*

Unlike in the King’s rooms, Fallon had quickly found what he was looking for in the Count’s study. He shoved a handful of parchments into the Count’s face. “When is Swane coming? What foul plans have you made with him? Have you sold your soul to Zorva? Talk, or so help me I will tear your guts out with my own hands.”

The terrified noble seemed unable to speak, his teeth were chattering so much.

“Obviously Rossmore was forced to do this, out of fear of his own life – isn’t that right?” Dina said soothingly.

The Count nodded so hard his head looked like it was about to come off. “I will happily to swear to Aroaril!” he gabbled.

“And you will write to Swane, tell him you no longer have any supplies, or men, and Rork has a huge garrison of Captain Fallon’s men just waiting for the chance to hang him up from the nearest tree,” Dina continued.

“I will?” Rossmore said weakly.

“Or we can just send him your head. Your choice,” Fallon snarled.

“Give me the quill. You can rely on me. Swane will not want to come anywhere near Rork by the time I have finished,” the Count promised, sweat pouring off his face.

*

“You didn’t have to be that harsh on poor Rossmore,” Dina said, the smile on her face robbing her words of any sting.

“The bastard was plotting with Swane! If we hadn’t paid him a visit, he would have joined that evil bogger in marching on Berry,” Fallon growled. “Fear and force is the only thing these nobles understand.”

“We are going to need him, and others like him,” Dina said in mild reproach. “Have you not heard the expression you catch more flies with honey than vinegar?”

“I prefer to squash my flies,” Fallon stated. “But at least we can stop Swane’s plots before they start. A few more messages like that and he will stay in Meinster until we can go and put an end to his evil.”

“True enough,” she said. “This trip is proving to be very useful.” She pointed to where another company of recruits was herding a seemingly never-ending flock of sheep down the road towards Berry. “Between confiscating food, every weapon and piece of armor we could find and even the Count’s wizard, we have removed any danger to us from Rork. Swane will soon discover the west of the country is ours and that he is pinned behind the mountains in Meinster. Thanks to the Guild of Magic, they will not be able to see what we are doing. So, you see, the Guilds are proving useful.”

Fallon snorted at that. “So, who is next?”

Dina looked across the countryside.

“I think south to Eastmeath and then across to Rexford. That will bring us grain and cattle,” she said.

“And the chance to terrify more fat nobles and sow a little fear in Swane’s dreams,” Fallon added.

“I like the way you think, Captain,” she said with a laugh.

*

“What is your excuse for delaying now?” Swane demanded.

“Highness, we were ready to leave but marching now would be pointless,” Meinster said fiercely.

Swane closed his eyes and counted to ten before opening them again. He needed this man but, Zorva knew, it was getting close to the point where he was going to have to make an example of someone.

“And what is that?” he asked, his voice dangerously calm.

But Meinster did not seem worried. “Highness, look here,” he said, gesturing towards a map.

Swane clenched his fist but a touch on his shoulder from Ryan steadied him.

“Highness, you need to see this,” he said gently.

With ill-disguised bad grace, Swane allowed himself to be seated at a table to see a large map of Gaelland.

“We had messages from many of the nobles, pledging support and men to your cause. We were planning to march through the land, gathering men to us as we went, before arriving at Berry to demand the people fulfill their oaths, rise and deliver the traitor Fallon and his accomplices to us,” Ryan said.

“But, in the past few days, we have received messages from Kenkilly, Rork, Eastmeath, Rexford and others, warning us that Fallon is already there. He has stripped those counties of men, weapons and food, sending them to Berry, then left strong garrisons behind in a swathe of county towns. If we march, we would march to our doom. Our men would arrive tired and hungry and, instead of collecting food and reinforcements, they would instantly be attacked by a bigger force.”

“How is this possible?” Swane growled. “He does not have so many men!”

“It seems that Fallon has been busy,” Ryan said. “Some of this may be lies, designed to trick us. But we cannot know for sure. The Guild of magic is blocking all of Finbar’s attempts to discover the true picture of what is happening on the other side of the mountains and sadly, we have not been able to make contact with your father’s network of informants in Berry. After Regan’s death, it seems they have gone into hiding.”

Swane thumped the table, biting back curses. “So what do we do?” he demanded.

“We must wait for better weather and redouble our efforts to find out what is really happening in the west of the country. If we march blindly into a trap, then Fallon will have us all dragged before a jeering crowd to our deaths.”

Swane hit the table again. But he could think of no way out of this. It ate at his insides but he was helpless. That could not continue. “How much of what we did with Brother Nahuatl do you remember?” he asked Ryan.

Rosaleen cursed herself for not leaving a couple of the villagers outside on guard. Hagen’s house was at the end of a tight street, so escape would have been difficult, but at least she would not have blundered out into this trap. The men did not look like soldiers, more like thieves, but that was hardly a comforting thought, especially as they had three times as many and Gallagher and his men only had knives, not swords.

“Did you think you could just walk through our streets, asking questions and flashing gold and not have anyone hear about it?” the leader of the swordsmen asked.

“Let’s back into the house and let them come get us,” Gallagher whispered.

“Not yet, we need to find out where they are from,” she murmured back. Turning away from him, she looked around at the rough group. “If you want gold, then we have plenty,” she offered loudly. “More than you have seen. Walk away and it is yours.”

She held her breath for a moment but even though she watched them carefully, not one set of eyes betrayed interest.

“We are already being paid well,” the leader boasted.

“Who by?” Rosaleen asked.

He laughed at that. “I could tell you, since you will not leave here alive. But even to speak the name aloud is worth more than my life.”

“And I suppose the fact that I am a priestess of Aroaril means nothing to you?” she challenged.

“Only makes this more fun,” he assured her.

Rosaleen took a half-step backwards. “Into the house then,” she whispered. “But we have to take that one alive.”

Gallagher snapped his fingers and the villagers raced back into Hagen’s house.

“Get them!”

The swordsmen ran after them, swords held high and bloodlust in their faces.

“As they come through the door, I will hold them: take them then,” she called quickly, seeing the fear on the villagers’ faces.

There was no time to say anything more, because the swordsmen were about to burst through the open door. She took a deep breath to calm herself and waved Gallagher forwards.

The other villagers were backing away from the door but he stepped in, his wickedly long knives in each hand. She offered up a quick prayer of thanks that he trusted her and then one to Aroaril for the strength to handle this task.

The first swordsman burst into the room with a bellowed war cry. He was tall and heavily muscled, with long, straggly brown hair that billowed around his face, and a thick beard that covered all but his eyes. She brought down her power and froze him, locking his muscles so he could not move, leaving him with his arm held high and his eyes bulging with shock.

Next moment Gallagher swung one of his gutting knives and the razor-sharp edge ripped across the man’s bearded throat, tearing through hair, skin, muscle, cartilage and blood vessels. A crimson spray painted the next man through the door, who blinked in shock firstly at being covered in hot blood and secondly at also being frozen in place, his every limb locked.

He had no chance for escape, because Gallagher stepped around the collapsing body of the first man and ripped his second knife up in a vicious blow that tore into the swordsman’s heart.

“Help Gall!” Rosaleen ordered, waving the other villagers forwards.

The thieves pressed in, jumping over the bodies of their fallen friends, only to be frozen in turn and lose their lives to ferocious stabs. The villagers picked up fallen swords and rammed them into guts and chests and necks, covering themselves in red.

Rosaleen hardened her heart to the screams and pleas for mercy, knowing that she and her companions would not have received any and that it was too dangerous to leave their assailants alive.

But the swordsmen were not fools and after five of them had been slaughtered like pigs, the others hesitated outside the door, unwilling to go inside.

“After them!” Rosaleen pointed at the two closest and held them in place. Gallagher had not bothered with a sword but still had his knives, each more than a foot of evilly curved steel, and he raced through the open door to thrust one into each neck and then rip them clear in a blinding gout of blood.

That was enough for the rest of the swordsmen, who broke and ran.

“Stop that one!” Rosaleen stepped over the corpses, slipping on the blood and entrails, and spotted the leader, who had stayed at the back while his men had raced in and died. Once more she reached out and held him as he tried to flee. He stood frozen on one leg, terror-filled eyes looking over his shoulder.

“Drag him back here and let’s find out what he knows before he joins the rest of his men,” Gallagher said, his face and arms covered in blood.

Rosaleen nodded, thinking he had never looked better to her.

*

A battered chair had been found in the wreckage of Hagen’s house and a space cleared by dragging a pair of bodies over towards the window, where they left a thick smear of blood on the wooden floor.

The dazed leader of the swordsmen was slammed into the chair and held there by two of the villagers while the rest of them changed their bloody tunics for cleaner ones from Hagen’s floor. None fit too well but at least they could walk the streets without exciting comment.

Rosaleen stepped over a body and approached the leader. The smell in Hagen’s house was revolting: shit and blood mingling to make a stench that bit at the back of her throat and made her eyes water. But she did not intend to be here long.

“Who are you?” she asked him.

He glared up at her and spat, forcing her to skip aside or have his phlegm hit her robe.

“Answer the sister!” Gallagher barked, back-handing the man across the face and making his nose and lips bleed. “You saw what we did to your men. Do you want to have your guts decorating this floor?”

The man spat blood from his torn lip, this time aiming for the floor. “Do what you will. I can say nothing,” he said dully. “I am a dead man either way but at least this way my family might live.”

Gallagher drew his knife slowly. “We’ll see if you tell the same story while I’m slicing your balls off a piece at a time,” he growled.

Rosaleen grabbed his arm, keeping him back. “There is another way to discover what he knows,” she said.

The man looked up at her suspiciously as she stepped around the chair and placed her hands on the man’s temples.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“I’m using Aroaril’s power to draw out your thoughts. Try to resist me and it could leave you a drooling idiot. I had to be careful not to use this power on a Kottermani Prince and the Duchess of Lunster. But we don’t care what happens to you,” she told him coldly. Partly that was to disguise her nervousness. The last time she had done this to a man, his mind had been guarded by a Fearpriest and she had ended up covered in his brains and skull.

“Gall, ask him questions. As he thinks about them, the answers will come to me,” she said.

“They will not!” the man cried.

“Your mind will be like an open book to me,” she told him, then nodded to Gallagher.

Offering a prayer to Aroaril, she reached out with her power and delved into his mind. Images spun at her, almost too fast to see, and she forced them to slow down.

Beneath her hands, the man twisted and wriggled, his temples slick with sweat, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps. But the villagers held him down and there was no escape for either his body or his mind.

“Fight me and you will end your days with the mind of a newborn babe,” she warned again, and he whimpered and slumped down.

“What do you see?” Gallagher asked, his voice sounding as though it were coming from a long way away.

“His name is Mika. He is a king of thieves in Lunster, employed by several of the big guilds to make sure anyone who does not hand over their fees pays a penalty,” she said, seeing images of him beating helpless traders and even burning out shops.

“Who set him to watch here?”

As the man wriggled, those images swam up to the surface of his mind.

“He was handed a bag of gold and told to watch this house. If anyone came asking questions about Hagen, they were to be killed and the house sealed up.”

“Who gave him the money?”

Rosaleen gasped and the man’s head nearly slipped from her grasp. “It is a man in the uniform of the Duke. He is wearing the tunic of an officer!”

“Who killed Hagen? Was it him?”

This time the images were more murky.

“He thinks so but he is not sure,” she said, interpreting what she was seeing in her mind’s eye. “Read out the message Hagen left.”

Gallagher paused as he took the parchment from her belt pouch. “What is important about the Duke’s summerhouse?” he asked.

The images were much sharper now.

“The man who paid him is there. And it was there he met the Kottermanis and told them where to attack!” Rosaleen cried. She let go of Mika’s head. “We need to go there.”