The Diamond Throne (33 page)

‘Of course, your Grace,’ the colonel said soberly. ‘I myself shall conduct the inspection.’

‘Meticulously, Colonel – most meticulously. The honour of the Church is reflected in the appearance of her soldiers.’

‘Your Grace may rely upon my attention to the most minute detail,’ the colonel assured him. ‘The honour of our service is also reflected by the appearance of our lowliest soldier.’

‘God appreciates your devotion, Colonel.’

‘I live but to serve Him, your Grace.’ The colonel bowed deeply.

Neither man smiled nor winked.

‘Oh,’ Dolmant said then, ‘before you leave, Colonel, bring me that ragged little beggar boy. I think I’ll leave him with the good brothers of this order – as an act of charity, of course.’

‘Of course, your Grace.’ The colonel snapped his fingers, and a burly sergeant dragged Talen by the scruff of the neck to the patriarch. Then Dolmant’s battalion advanced on the captain and his men, effectively pinning them against the high wall of the chapterhouse with their pikes. The sooty soldiers of the Patriarch of Coombe were quickly disarmed and then marched off under close guard.

Dolmant affectionately reached down and patted the slender neck of his white mule; then he looked critically up at the parapet. ‘Haven’t you left yet, Sparhawk?’ he asked.

‘We were just making our preparations, your Grace.’

‘The day wears on, my son,’ Dolmant told him. ‘God’s work cannot be accomplished by sloth.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind, your Grace,’ Sparhawk said. Then his eyes narrowed, and he stared hard down at Talen. ‘Give it back,’ he commanded.

‘What?’ Talen answered with a note of anguish in his voice.

‘All of it. Every last bit.’

‘But, Sparhawk –’

‘Now,
Talen.’

Grumbling, the boy began to remove all manner of small, valuable objects from inside his clothes, depositing them in the hands of the startled Patriarch of Demos. ‘Are you satisfied now, Sparhawk?’ he demanded a bit sullenly, glaring up at the parapet.

‘Not entirely, but it’s a start. I’ll know better after I search you once you’re inside the gate.’

Talen sighed and dug into several more hidden pockets, adding more items to Dolmant’s already overflowing hands.

‘I assume you’re taking this boy with you, Sparhawk?’ Dolmant asked, tucking his valuables inside his cassock.

‘Yes, your Grace,’ Sparhawk replied.

‘Good. I’ll sleep better knowing that he’s not roaming the streets. Make haste, my son, and Godspeed.’ Then the patriarch turned his mule and rode on back up the street.

‘At any rate,’ Sir Tynian continued his obviously embellished account of certain adventures of his youth, ‘the local Lamork barons grew tired of these brigands and came to our chapterhouse to enlist our aid in exterminating them. We had all grown rather bored with patrolling the Zemoch border, and so we agreed. To be honest about the whole thing, we looked upon the affair as something in the nature of a sporting event – a few days of hard riding and a nice brisk fight at the end.’

Sparhawk let his attention wander. Tynian’s compulsive talking had been virtually uninterrupted since they had left Chyrellos and crossed the border into the southern kingdom of Cammoria. Although the stories were at first amusing, they eventually grew repetitious. To hear Tynian tell it, he had figured prominently in every major battle and minor skirmish on the Eosian continent in the past ten years. Sparhawk concluded that the Alcione Knight was not so much an unabashed braggart as he was an ingenious storyteller who put himself in the centre of the action of each story to give it a certain immediacy. It was a harmless pastime, really, and it helped to make the miles go faster as they rode down into Cammoria on the road to Borrata.

The sun was warmer here than it had been in Elenia, and the breeze that skipped puff-ball clouds across the
intensely blue sky smelled almost spring-like. The fields around them, untouched by frost, were still green, and the road unwound like a white ribbon, dipping into valleys and snaking up verdant hillsides. It was a good day fora ride, and Faran was obviously enjoying himself.

Sparhawk had already begun to make an assessment of his companions. Tynian was very nearly as happy-go-lucky as Kalten. The sheer bulk of his upper torso, however, and the professional way he handled his weapons indicated that he would be a solid man in a fight, should it come to that. Bevier was perhaps a bit more high-strung. The Cyrinic Knights were known for their formality and their piety. They were also touchy. Bevier would need to be handled carefully. Sparhawk decided to have a word in private with Kalten. His friend’s fondness for casual jesting might need to be curbed where Bevier was concerned. The young Cyrinic, though, would obviously also be an asset in the event of trouble.

Ulath was an enigma. He had a towering reputation, but Sparhawk had not had many dealings with the Genidian Knights of far northern Thalesia. They were reputed to be fearsome warriors, but the fact that they wore chain mail instead of steel-plate armour concerned him a bit. He decided to feel out the huge Thalesian on that score. He reined Faran in slightly to allow Ulath to catch up with him.

‘Nice morning,’ he said pleasantly.

Ulath grunted. Getting him to talk might prove difficult. Then, surprisingly, he actually volunteered something. ‘In Thalesia, there’s still two feet of snow on the ground,’ he said.

That must be miserable.’

Ulath shrugged. ‘You get used to it, and snow makes for good hunting – boars, stags, Trolls, that sort of thing.’

‘Do you actually hunt Trolls?’

‘Sometimes. Every so often a Troll goes crazy. If he comes down into the valleys where Elenes live and starts killing cows – or people – we have to hunt him down.’

‘I’ve heard that they’re fairly large.’

‘Yes. Fairly.’

‘Isn’t it a bit dangerous to fight one with only chain mail armour?’

‘It’s not too bad, really. They only use clubs. A man might get his ribs broken sometimes, but that’s about all.’

‘Wouldn’t full armour be an advantage?’

‘Not if you have to cross any rivers – and we have a lot of rivers in Thalesia. A man can peel off a mail shirt even if he’s sitting on the bottom of a river. It might be a little hard to hold your breath long enough to get rid of a full suit of armour, though.’

‘That makes sense.’

‘We thought so ourselves. We had a preceptor a while back who thought that we should wear full armour like the other orders – for the sake of appearances. We threw one of our brothers dressed in a mail shirt into the harbour at Emsat. He got out of his shirt and came to the surface in about a minute. The preceptor was wearing full armour. When we threw him in, he didn’t come back up. Maybe he found something more interesting to do down there.’

‘You drowned your preceptor?’ Sparhawk asked in astonishment.

‘No,’ Ulath corrected. ‘His armour drowned him. Then we elected Komier as preceptor. He’s got better sense than to make foolish suggestions like that.’

‘You Genidians appear to be an independent sort of order. You actually elect your own preceptors?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Not really, no. We send a panel of names to the Hierocracy and let them do the choosing.’

‘We make it easier for them. We only send them one name.’

Kalten came back down the road at a canter. The big blond man had been riding about a quarter of a mile in the lead to scout out possible danger. ‘There’s something strange up ahead, Sparhawk,’ he said tensely.

‘How do you mean strange?’

‘There’s a pair of Pandions at the top of the next hill.’ There was a slightly strained note in Kalten’s voice, and he was visibly sweating.

‘Who are they?’

‘I didn’t go up there to ask.’

Sparhawk looked sharply at his friend. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ Kalten replied. ‘I just had a strong feeling that I shouldn’t go near them, for some reason. I think they want to talk with you. Don’t ask me where I got that idea either.’

‘All right,’ Sparhawk said. ‘I’ll go see what they want.’ He spurred Faran into a gallop and thudded up the long slope of the road towards the hilltop. The two mounted men wore black Pandion armour, but they gave none of the customary signs of greeting as Sparhawk approached, and neither of them raised his visor. Their horses were peculiarly gaunt, almost skeletal.

‘What is it, brothers?’ Sparhawk asked, reining Faran in a few yards from the pair. He caught a momentary whiff of an unpleasant smell, and for some reason a chill ran through him.

One of the armoured figures turned slightly and pointed a steel-clad arm down into the next valley. He did not speak, but appeared to be pointing at a winter-denuded elm grove at one side of the road about a half-mile farther on.

‘I don’t quite –’ Sparhawk started; then he caught the
sudden glint of sunlight on polished steel among the spidery branches of the grove. He shaded his eyes with one hand and peered intently at the cluster of trees. He saw a hint of movement and another flash of reflected light. ‘I see,’ he said gravely. Thank you, my brothers. Would you care to join us in routing the ambushers waiting below?’

For a long moment, neither black-armoured figure responded, then one of them inclined his head in assent. They both moved then, one to either side of the road, and sat their horses, waiting.

Puzzled by their strange behaviour, Sparhawk rode back down the road to rejoin the others. ‘We’ve got some trouble up ahead,’ he reported. ‘There’s a group of armed men hiding in a grove of trees in the next valley.’

‘An ambush?’ Tynian asked.

‘People don’t usually hide unless they’ve got some mischief in mind.’

‘Could you tell how many there are?’ Bevier asked, loosening his Lochaber from its sling on his saddlebow.

‘Not really.’

‘One way to find out,’ Ulath said, reaching for his axe.

‘Who are the two Pandions?’ Kalten asked nervously.

‘They didn’t say.’

‘Did they give you the same kind of feeling they gave me?’

‘What kind of feeling?’

‘As if my blood had just frozen.’

Sparhawk nodded. ‘Something like that,’ he admitted. ‘Kurik,’ he said then, ‘you and Berit take Sephrenia, Flute, and Talen to some place out of sight.’

The squire nodded curtly.

‘All right then, gentlemen,’ Sparhawk said to the other knights, ‘let’s go and have a look.’

They started out at a rolling trot, five armoured knights
mounted on war horses and wielding a variety of unpleasant-looking weapons. At the top of the hill they were joined by the two silent men in black armour. Once again Sparhawk caught the unpleasant smell, and once again his blood ran strangely cold.

‘Has anybody got a horn?’ Tynian asked. ‘We should let them know we’re coming.’

Ulath unbuckled one of his saddlebags and took out the curled and twisted horn of some animal. It was quite large and had a brass mouthpiece at its tip.

‘What kind of an animal has horns like that?’ Kalten asked him.

‘Ogre,’ Ulath replied. Then he set the mouthpiece to his lips and blew a shattering blast.

‘For the glory of God and the honour of the Church!’ Bevier exclaimed, rising in his stirrups and flourishing his Lochaber.

Sparhawk drew his sword and drove his spurs into Faran’s flanks. The big horse plunged eagerly ahead, his ears laid back and his teeth bared.

There were shouts of chagrin from the elm grove as the Church Knights plunged down the hill at a gallop with the grass whipping at the legs of their chargers. Then perhaps eighteen armoured men on horseback broke out of their concealment and rode out into the open to meet the charge.

‘They want a fight!’ Tynian shouted jubilantly.

‘Watch yourselves when we mix with them!’ Sparhawk warned. There may be more hiding in the grove!’

Ulath continued to sound his horn until the last moment. Then he quickly stuffed it back into his saddlebag and began to whirl his great war axe about his head.

Three of the ambushers had held back; just before the two parties crashed together, they turned tail and rode off at a dead run, flogging their horses in sheer panic.

The initial impact might easily have been heard a mile away. Sparhawk and Faran were slightly in the lead, with the others fanned out and back in a kind of wedge formation. Sparhawk stood up in his stirrups to deliver broad overhand strokes to the right and the left as he crashed into the strangers. He split open a helmet and saw blood and brains come gushing out as the man fell stiffly out of his saddle. On his next stroke his sword sheared through an upraised shield, and he heard a scream as his blade bit into the arm to which the shield was strapped. Behind him he could hear the sounds of other blows and shrieks as his friends followed him through the mêlée.

Their rush through the centre of the ambushers left ten down, killed or maimed, but, as they whirled to attack again, a half-dozen more came crashing out of the grove to attack them from the rear.

‘Go ahead!’ Bevier shouted as he wheeled his horse. ‘I’ll hold these off while you finish the rest!’ He raised his Lochaber and charged.

‘Help him, Kalten!’ Sparhawk called to his friend, then led Tynian, Ulath, and the two strangers against the dazed survivors of their first attack. Tynian’s broadsword had a much wider blade than those of the Pandions and thus a great deal more weight. That weight made the weapon savagely efficient, and Tynian cut through flesh or armour with equal ease. Ulath’s axe, of course, had no finesse or subtlety. He hewed at men as a woodsman might hew at trees.

Sparhawk briefly saw one of the two strange Pandions rise in his stirrups to deliver a vast overhand blow. What the knight held in its gauntleted fist, however, was not a sword, but rather that same kind of glowing nimbus that had been given to Sephrenia in the shabby upstairs apartment in Chyrellos by the insubstantial ghost of Sir
Lakus. The nimbus appeared to pass completely through the body of the awkward mercenary the Pandion faced. The man’s face went absolutely white, and he stared down at his chest in horror, but there was no blood, and his rust-splotched armour remained intact. With a shriek of terror, he threw his sword away and fled. Then Sparhawk’s attention was diverted by another enemy.