Traitor's Knot (47 page)

‘You'll have to choose, won't you?' Davien closed at length. ‘Which structure to spare: Rathain's monarchy or the compact?' No ripple of air marked the shift as the renegade Sorcerer dissolved his bodily form for departure. His last word impressed the stillness with cruel clarity.
‘Don't wait too long. The more you waver before you decide, the more perilous the stake on the outcome.'

At Althain Tower, the rise of the moon brightened the sands of the Bittern Desert: where once, in a past that predated history, two dragons had fought and scorched hills and glades with their wasting breath. Where later, Paravians had bled and died in failed sacrifice for redemption. Here, the murmur of wind bespoke an undying cry of lament.

Tonight's sorrow was no less bitterly fierce. In the space where a centaur warden had once stood, facing the same bleak hills with their grievous burden of bones, the whisper of light fell as kindly over Sethvir's crinkled face. The rays silver-lit the slow well of tears that slid through the hacked gap in his beard.

After dark on the roadway bound from Sanshevas, a bonfire threw a torrid glow over the wind-raked stand of the broom. Sultry flares cast the shadows of irritable men and lit the stirred backs of disgruntled beasts. Wrapped in the smoked-tainted breath of close heat, echoing across the tangle of mussed goods and wracked wagons, raised voices marked the seething frustration of the guarded caravan, whose journey to Southshire had come to disaster. Dissent raged over whether to build up the blaze or douse the last embers outright. Half the armed men feared attracting more
iyats
, while the road-master swore by the grey in his beard that a darkened camp would invite stealth and murder by Selkwood's marauding barbarians.

Factions splintered the argument: the tradesmen and drivers wished to turn tail and limp all the way back to Atchaz.

‘Torn silk can be sold for cost to the quilt-makers,' the road-master insisted, morose. ‘Get into Sanshevas ahead of the rains, we'd at least avoid mildew beneath those ripped tarps. Catch bad weather, and we'll be left stirring pots for the ragmen who bleach out the dyes to make paper.'

‘You can't sell for salvage,' snapped a head-hunter tracker, hunkered down to sharpen his knives. ‘Damn you man, think ahead. What's left but wreckage to save our good name? We don't show something to prove we were fiend-plagued, we'll have no evidence to escape a criminal case with the magistrates.'

The troop of lancers now answerable for the Light's vanished tribute supported Ganish league's adamant stance. Shouting, they insisted the hard luck party should remain intact to corroborate their bizarre mishap. ‘Stay the
course of Southshire's gruelling inquest. If we don't stay together to back up the truth, we'll all be charged as collaborators.'

Into the tempest, by no chance at all, strode the itinerant bard and the button-seller. They were blameless wayfarers bound downcoast for Sanshevas, they explained, while the head-hunter skirmishers prodded them in, and several lancers pinned them at weapon point.

‘Just let us lay our bedrolls down for the night. We could share our goat cheese and raisins,' the stout button seller offered hopefully. ‘Your camp-fire's what kept us walking since dark. We thought we'd be safer in company' When the lance points stayed fixed, he shrugged with fidgety apprehension. ‘Less chance we'd be stalked by barbarians, though I'm sorry to see we've misjudged. Clan brigands might sneak in and pilfer tin buttons. But chop no green wood, they don't cut your throat. You fellows here seem worse-tempered.'

As one lancer bristled, the minstrel laid a restraining finger on the crowding tip of the weapon. ‘My friend means no harm.' A slender, cloaked figure, he engaged a smile and flicked the canvas strap hanging his lyranthe. ‘I could offer my touch on the strings for a tune.' As the caravan's road-master shoved to the fore, he added, ‘You've suffered a mishap? Those wagons look wrecked. You actually do seem in need of an hour of light entertainment.'

‘That might keep your mad Ganishmen from drubbing my drivers!' the grizzled professional felt moved to point out. ‘Since you rock-heads won't back down and let us cut losses, why not pass the evening with music?'

The sunwheel guard relented and lowered their steel, if only to seize on the chance to escape the debate on their festering predicament.

Button seller and free singer soon sat by the fire. They ate their rough meal, while listening through the recounted plague of rogue
iyats
that had spoiled the townsmen's caravan.

‘It's not canny, what happened,' confided a field archer in dismal distress. ‘Who's going to believe we didn't spin the wild tale to cover a robbery? By all that's true! Who but a Shadow-blind fool would make off with the tribute gold bound for Avenor?'

The singer twisted the grass stem just plucked to clean out his teeth. ‘I don't know,' he mused. ‘A troublesome
iyat's
more reasonable, surely, than a pack of grown men who've worked themselves dizzy running in fear of the dark.'

A stunned pause ensued. Through the gasp of more than one intaken breath, the lance captain rapped off a question. ‘You have no faith in the cause of the Light?'

‘And why should I?' The singer stared back, eyes of an indeterminate hazel turned suddenly vivid with mirth. ‘Is this avatar so almighty powerful? If he hates the idea of darkness that much, why not birth the miracle of a new sun? That way he could rid himself of the night. You lot could work double shift, chasing heretics. Or, perhaps not. That might cost his holiness too pinching much, since each man would be owed twice the pay share.'

Outrage, shock, then the cracking pressure of long days spent chasing lost coin on a fruitless search through the brush: the weight proved too much. A muffled snigger disturbed the quiet. Then the lance captain broke and guffawed.

‘Oh, please!' the raffish minstrel objected. ‘This issue is
serious.
Some flattering daisy's named himself divine. What does that mean? Should rats in the sewers pay him respects? Will they sell off his night-soil for perfume, do you think, or does immortal virtue
in fact
grunt and void straining bowels like the rest of us?'

‘Watch your tongue, friend,' the button seller warned. ‘You might cause offence. After all, if the rag on yon captain was a sunwheel surcoat, the dedicate soldier beside you is probably one of those life-sworn.'

‘How pious.' The free singer leaned back, stretched an arm, and tugged the cover off his lyranthe. ‘To me, the whole bunch look like worried men. Next week, they could face a branding as criminals in front of a Southshire magistrate. Can't a god sent immortal distinguish a truthful man from a sneaking thief and a liar? Seems plain to me, actually. This idea of tribute smells a bit suspect. If heaven's minion needed to traffic in gold, should he not clap his hands and call down a shower of bullion from his supreme connections on high?'

‘His Divine Grace hates clansmen,' a hatchet-faced head-hunter commented. ‘That's good enough cause to suit me.'

The minstrel smiled. ‘Very good.' His fingers stabbed a spray of notes from the strings he began tuning by absent habit. ‘But why should his exaltedness keep paying your bounties, when the whole country-side's turning out elite troops to slaughter old blood lines for nothing?'

Shot erect, now outraged, the lance captain puffed up to take issue.

Before he spoke, the insolent singer dug an elbow into the button seller beside him. ‘Friend, these grunts are too glum. You've still got those brandy crocks tucked in your pack? Pop the corks. Why not share? If something's not done to lift this sour mood, every last errant fiend will come back. You might not value your shrivelled equipment. But I'm tender and young. Not a bit ready to ruin my sport in the blankets! Or didn't you
look?
These poor wretches are scratching themselves raw through ripped clothing! Makes me wince, just to think of risking the breeks that keep gnat bites from welting my bollocks!'

The brandy, exhumed, was exceptionally sweet. Perhaps even suspiciously potent. The jugs passed hand to hand, while the minstrel's satire kept its keen edge, catchy enough to invite uproarious laughter and knee-slapping rounds of shared choruses. The lyrics maligning the Light became insidiously infectious. Although singer and button seller moved on at dawn, they left every man from the disarrayed caravan singing into the morning.

Beyond any doubt, the minstrel's bold repertoire would survive and spread through the port brothels of Southshire. In the mouths of the head-hunters and drivers, the scurrilous verses would travel on and take the stews of Sanshevas by storm.

‘You're evil incarnate,' Dakar accused, well away and sweating his hangover through a waist-deep slog across a tidal marsh. They had left the road under the cover of mist to make rendezvous with a fishing smack. ‘My brash singer, do you realize how near you came to earning a lancer's steel through your guts?'

‘As close as the salvation in your spelled flasks of brandy' The bard's teeth flashed beneath the lyranthe he balanced on top of his sable head. ‘I'm not dead. Nor was the binding of Davien's longevity put to the test on a goring. We're ahead of the game, actually. I'd hazard the guess: a few sunwheel dedicates will defect rather than cling to an idiot's honour and moulder in irons at Southshire. Aren't you eager to tackle the morass we'll find down the coast at Shaddorn?'

‘Not if you're stoned out of town by a mob,' Dakar puffed, flailing to haze off humming insects and the chaff sifting down from the bulrushes.

‘What a fine lack of faith you place in the ridiculous,' stated Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn. He strode forward, nonplussed; perversely still merry since he had been too busy with playing to sample Dakar's doctored drink. ‘I thought the objective was to turn the mob with the stones on the tents of the sunwheel recruiters?'

‘No more swamps,' Dakar grumbled. ‘Or I swear on my blood, I'll hoard the drink for myself and join ranks with the pious offenders.'

The fishing smack hired to board two soggy passengers breasted a brisk chop and made rendezvous with a merchant brig, hanging off shore just past the horizon. The boat grappled her lines long enough to relinquish the contents of her hold, which consisted of contraband goods wrapped in tarpaulin and concealed beneath the glistening shine of the night's catch of mullet. For two extra silvers, her skipper was also persuaded to part with his small barrels of spoiled mackerel, stewed to reeking as bait for the crab trappers whose skiffs worked the shallows inside the reefs.

The brown-haired, agile passenger who had given no name helped his stout companion aboard, then waved the fishing smack off with good cheer. The brig's sun-darkened crewmen cast off her lines, while the grizzled, blue-water captain looked on with a dubious squint.

Lips pursed, he measured the sealed barrels and heaped fish, shovelled in an oozing, silvery heap that drew clouds of flies on his foredeck. ‘Man, in this heat, we'll be wearing a weeping, ripe stink, since I notice you didn't pack any salt. I swear by Dharkaron's cast Spear, you'd better know what in Sithaer you're doing. Or I'll chuck the lot overboard, and your carcass, too. In these waters, believe me, the sharks never pause. You'll be torn to shreds in a heart-beat.'

The scoundrel brought aboard at Fiark's behest smiled back with errant delight. ‘You've brought the empty wine tuns I wanted from Innish? Very good. Let's bring them topside at once.'

Comprehension sharpened the captain's astute face. ‘Oh, man! You're not going to—'

‘Oh, yes. Just watch me,' the visitor promised, then proceeded to fill the twoscore emptied hogsheads bearing the sunwheel brand with his load of puddled, dead fish. He seasoned the mix with the brew in the bait casks, then had the ship's coopers seal in the bungs, while the southern sun beat down like a torch and rotted the contents to sloshing jelly.

While the sailhands set the brig on her east-bound course, and the fat landlubber napped in the shade, the nameless man shared peppered sausage and bread in the aft cabin with the squint-eyed captain. Behind a closed door, the probing questions continued, each sally aimed to sate an unsettled curiosity.

Deflected by his visitor's suave tongue, the captain at last tried a frontal assault, his massive hands clamped to a jack of black rum, brewed from Sanshevas molasses. ‘You know you can't just sashay up to the docks, then switch out your barrels for a prized shipment of Orvandir red. Not under the noses of the Light's armed guard. Nor will you evade the devilsome eyes of the custom keeper's wolf pack of excisemen.'

‘I agree.' The strange young man seemed roguish enough, except for the fact he refused any drink, and his stare seemed to pierce a man's silences. ‘That's why you'll lend me grade paper and ink.'

‘A forged requisition?' The brig's master chuckled, dismissive. ‘That rum you're too proud to sample today will taste like pure joy, at your hanging.'

The visitor grinned. ‘You're right. Shall we wager?' He leaned down, delved into the canvas lately drawn from the heap of dead fish, and produced an intact seal in gold wax, affixed with a pristine white ribbon.

The captain's eyes widened. ‘Damn me! That's genuine!'

‘Nothing less.' Clever fingers accepted the pen from the chart desk, then paper, and in professional script, proceeded to fabricate a bundle of documents of lading addressed to the customs office at Southshire. One commanded the Light's resource to hire a team of longshoremen to debark a wine shipment for the sunwheel recruitment tents. The other, less complex, enjoined the port authorities to release a like number of hogsheads, stacked and lying empty, to be onloaded for transport to the wineries' guild agent at Durn.

‘You will then burn the new list you receive at Southshire and finish your run on the original papers Fiark dispatched from Innish. The delivery you leave will be the ones I've just borrowed, that now keep my haul of prime baitfish.'