Читать книгу Stormed Fortress: Fifth Book of The Alliance of Light - Janny Wurts, Janny Wurts - Страница 24

The looming spectre of war strained the days that followed the rebuff of Lysaer’s sent envoy. That discordant, first note swelled into the overture that presaged the onslaught of siege. Both fortress towns at the mouth of the estuary dropped their posturing: Kalesh and Adruin launched ships for blockade and unleashed the advance of armed troops.

Parrien’s war galleys still ranged at large. Yet even Duke Bransian’s bellicose temper acknowledged the damaging fact: the massing deployment set under way defanged his fleet as a tactical asset. Oared ships could not breast the rough, autumn sea. No vessel under Alestron’s flag might claim safe harbour in any port sworn to the Alliance. Cut off from access by blue-water sail, and the free territory under clan loyalties as his last source of provision, s’Brydion could only fume. His captains’ rapacious prowess was reduced to the strike-and-flee raiding of harriers. Such engagements might nip at the flanks of enemy shipping. But resupply could no longer reach the citadel with impunity. Not without running the gamut: the narrow inlet, with its vicious tides and its forty leagues of ledged shore-line that daily became entrenched by the tents and banners of hostile encampments.

Each morning, Duke Bransian awoke to his wife, gauging his mood in sharp silence.

‘Death and plague, woman!’ he barked at last, distempered by too many quandaries. ‘Why not just spit out your opinion? By the red spear of Dharkaron’s vengeance, a man could watch his parts shrivel under your hag-ridden glowering!’

Liesse pushed her raw-boned frame upright in bed and eyed the bristling jut of the beard on the pillow. ‘You would actually listen?’

‘I always listen,’ the duke said, annoyed. ‘Just hang your silly, unnatural notion, that hearing means following your orders.’

His duchess snorted with peeling contempt. ‘The day you take instruction from anyone else, we’ll be torching your corpse at your funeral!’

‘Don’t tell me again that we should have tucked tail and not ripped with bared teeth for the jugular!’ Unmoved, lounging flat amid crumpled sheets, the duke crossed his battle-scarred forearms. ‘Prince Arithon chose to abandon us, first. He well deserves the whip-lash he’ll get from that snip chosen as his caithdein.’

‘You presume I would lose the same argument twice?’ Liesse flounced from the mattress. Beyond the keep’s floor-boards, scarred by hobnailed boots, an orange sunrise brightened the arrow-slit. The glare spat sullen glints off the bronze-cornered chests, and burnished the steel bosses of the duke’s baldric, carelessly slung on a chair-back. ‘It’s not Rathain’s feckless prince,’ she admitted, ‘but the warnings delivered by three Fellowship Sorcerers that set the cold into my liver.’

‘My heir should be wearing tanned buckskins in Atwood? Ath, woman! You bleed me!’ Bransian levered upright, to a groan from the bed-frame, which also bore scars, where an ancestor had stabbed his knives inside of arm’s reach in the head-board. ‘Sevrand’s an adult. Let him choose for himself.’

The duke kicked off the blankets and snatched for the grimy gambeson that had padded yesterday’s chainmail. ‘You would shame me ahead of the Fatemaster himself! No fighting man on these walls will stand firm, believing I planned on defeat.’

To which Liesse bent her head. Face buried amid her uncombed brown hair and the clutch of exasperated fingers, she sighed.

Bransian’s bunched fists released, as he realized she was trembling. ‘Wife!’ he barked, sucked hollow by tenderness. One barefoot stride and he gathered her close: her tears would bring him to his knees, if not wring him wretchedly gutless. ‘You should fear a few enemies?’

‘No,’ Liesse gasped, muffled. She raised her chin from his chest, coughing back laughter. ‘I should despair of the hope you could reach for clean clothes before letting the filth rot them to rags off your back!’

Yet no biting humour might stem the Alliance advance that surged in on them like flood-tide.

As the new morning brightened, the shore-side watch beacons relayed more damning reports. Alliance companies now mushroomed over the muddied acres left scorched by the reivers’ torch. Hourly, more troop-laden warships hove in. Anchored hulls jammed the coves like teeth in a trap, until the expectant tension locked down, cranked as an overtaut drumhead.

Day followed day. From lookout tower, to battlement, to the eyrie vantage of the upper citadel, the sentries flashed mirrors in coded signal. Alestron watched Lysaer’s grand war host assemble, until the counters that burdened Bransian’s maps swallowed all of the surrounding shore-line. Dawn followed dawn, while the town hunkered down behind fast-shut gates and denied egress to out-bound civilians.

‘I don’t understand,’ Fionn Areth complained from his leaned stance between the Sea Gate’s battle-scarred merlons. Above him, the massive groan of the winches raised the hoist, bearing stone-shot and slopping, filled casks. Saltwater was being stockpiled ahead, for the flammable hidings that guarded the foundations under the ramparts.

As the platform’s shadow scythed over his face, the goatherd sawed on in his Araethurian twang, ‘Shouldn’t the duke bless every tuck-tailed coward who wishes to leave? Why hang on to their chicken-shit mouths? They’re just wasting his food stores and draining his cisterns.’

‘Morale,’ stated Jeynsa, as bitten as forest-bred manners could frame a response.

Fionn Areth slid his gaze sideward and studied her. A tall, freckled lynx, she lounged with her chin on her fist, while the wind fluttered through her knife-cropped brown hair. Her bitten-off nails were black-rimmed with tar. That would be the remnant of yesterday’s toil, a longshoreman’s morning spent loading the pitch barrels sent to the Wyntok Gate.

Engrossed, the grass-lander chafed to dissect the enigma she represented. Forestborn daughter of a former high earl, she wore bladed weapons as though bred to war. Though her woman’s build could not outmatch a man’s bulk, the fact never humbled her manner. Jeynsa’s brazen promise to summon her crown prince gave even s’Brydion aggression a frost-ridden pause. If the duke and his brothers were wont to treat her tenderly for a move that bordered on treason, their citadel’s matrons, with their clinging toddlers, applauded her as a saviour.

For Fionn Areth, the fascination stayed fresh: he wondered how Arithon was going to handle the chit, if and when he chose to arrive.

Until then, the arena became verbal prodding. ‘Morale, so you say?’ the grass-lander mused. ‘Then you’d be the going expert on sieges, come from an even more back-country birthright than I?’

Jeynsa laughed. ‘Rats leave sinking ships. The s’Brydion banner has never been struck.’ Six hundred and fifty-three years to the day, all campaigns to rout charter rule from Alestron had been smashed at punishing cost. ‘Clanblood doesn’t shrink at long odds. Let the squeamish guilds bleed their wealth from this town, or pack off their wives and young children, there’s too little left at stake to stem losses. Some panicked town turncoat might unlatch the back-postern, or take bribes to welcome the enemy.’

But no assault in Alestron’s proud history carried the threat levelled now.

Fionn Areth had shared the look-outs’ reports. He had heard the opinions of Vhandon and Talvish, and eavesdropped on grim talk in the barracks. If today’s white-capped view from the Sea Gate embrasure did not show the invidious advance at the harbour mouth, the truth was not secret: their sea-bound supply line was thwarted. Kalesh and Adruin commanded the narrows. The massed counters stacked on the duke’s tactical maps also stymied the citadel’s access by trade-road. Just as likely, the outer gates had been barred to stop nervous deserters from joining the enemy.

The more telling point, to Fionn Areth’s stark eye, was how the sorcerer known as the Spinner of Darkness would grapple the appalling scale of sheer numbers. If the Teir’s’Ffalenn elected to bestir himself, and risk Jeynsa’s bid for protection; the grass-lander felt qualified to weigh the question. His own reprieve, snatched from the scaffold, had not been the pitched target of three kingdoms’ fanatical muster.

‘Charter law would seem scarcely a boon,’ he declared. ‘Or why else should you lump those of us without lineage in arse-kissing terms with your foemen?’

That touched a nerve, finally. Jeynsa straightened and stared. Green as fire in opal, her glance raked him. ‘Ask your royal double how my father died. Then remember. The price in bloodshed on Daon Ramon Barrens was the cost of your rescue from Jaelot’s executioner.’

‘I was not made party to your prince’s choice,’ Fionn Areth said, a piercing fact to strike wind from his victim.

But not Jeynsa Teiren’s’Valerient, who backed down from no scrap: whose arms underneath her short-sleeved leather jerkin wore bruises gained sparring with Sevrand at quarterstaves. ‘You dare to pass judgement on me? Or set me up for comparison?’

Fionn Areth sustained her blistering stare. ‘I condemn nothing,’ he pronounced without shame. ‘Rather, I’d ask: are you Arithon’s friend or his enemy?’

That touched a nerve, also. Fanned rage chilled to ice. Jeynsa sized up the goatherd’s antagonism, then dismissed his bold query, unflinching. ‘You’ve spent too much time under Talvish’s heel, in quarters with rank-and-file fighting men. They measure by nothing else but brute force, which dangerously narrows your view-point.’

‘Then show me,’ Fionn Areth insisted.

Jeynsa snapped up his challenge and led him through the town. Not from the vantage of the inner citadel, whose lofty battlements had been raised by Paravians. Not over the chain-bridge to the middle town district, where the cast shadow of pending attack dimmed the air with stirred dust from lance drills on the practice field. Nor where the squads of sweating men laboured, refining the range of the trebuchets. Instead, Jeynsa marched him into the arched carriage-way that fronted the ducal residence.

A wagon was parked by the carved, granite steps, with their pillars of Highscarp marble. The four-in-hand team at the hub of activity wore gleaming harness, brasses studded with Alestron’s bull blazon. There, Jeynsa prevailed upon Mearn’s pregnant wife, and asked for the two of them to accompany her on the daily rounds shared between the ranking s’Brydion women.

‘Someone must hear and respond to the people,’ Lady Fianzia explained to the baffled Araethurian. Her piled, blonde hair was wound with strung pearls, a delicate accent to her jade dress, trimmed at the hem with white ribbon. Blunt as flint, despite the kestrel’s build that seemed overwhelmed by her ripened belly, she tipped her chin towards the servant who loaded a stacked pile of hampers. ‘Lend a hand. We’ll be away, soonest.’

‘You’ve packed bread for the needy?’ Fionn Areth inquired, hefting baskets that smelled of fresh baking.

Fianzia arched her eyebrows in signal offence. ‘Shame on you, goatherd! Alestron’s seat rules under charter law!’

The grass-lander scowled through his tumbled, black hair. When he failed to amend his insulting mistake with apology, the lady gathered up her full skirt. She declined Jeynsa’s help; leaned on the armed man-servant, who assisted her gravid weight up to the driver’s seat.

‘Get in, young fool!’ The instant her passengers clambered aboard, she took reins and whip into tiny, ringed hands and rousted the team out with tart vehemence. ‘Jeynsa was right. Your presumptions are dangerous. Stuck as you are with the face of a prince, you’d better learn quick what sets us apart from the usurping mayors.’

The wagon rolled out of the carriage-way to the brisk jingle of harness bells. Past the arched gate with its charging bull finials, Fianzia steered the gleaming horses down-slope. No novice, she jockeyed between the drays that ground uphill with stockpiled supply for the warehouses. She threaded the steep, switched-back turns and showed crisp courtesy to the other drivers. Baled fodder, crated livestock and chickens, barrels of flour and beer, and sacks of hulled oats and barley vied for space with packs of shouting children. From the smithies came chests of crossbolts and arrows, and for the defenceworks, the reeking scraped hides, bundled up green from the stock-yard.

Few vehicles moved outbound. Fianzia’s wagon seemed out of place, breasting the war-time bustle past the stone mansions and officers’ homes in the merchant precinct. Her place on the whip’s box commanded no deference. The ducal badge on the lead horses’ bridles was scarcely imposing enough to draw notice.

Yet the way parted for her. Amid din and turmoil, through dust and smoke, acrid with the bite of quenched steel and the charcoal fumes from the armourers’, she drove like a breath of spring sunshine. Irascible carters granted her precedence. The armed guards at the barbican saluted her through. By now sweated over their burnish of grooming, the horses clopped through the slatted lanes, bordered by wood-frame tenements; past the tiny, fenced yards with their pecking hens, and the shuttered sheds, where the journeymen’s shacks butted into the shops of the craft quarter.

Mearn’s lady reined up at length in a cramped, public courtyard, criss-crossed with string lines drying laundry. The cobbles were slicked with puddles and run-off, centred by a neighbourhood well. Hung linen snapped on the sea-breeze. The tin strips of iyat banes jangled. Children in motley peeped through potted herbs and leaned at the railings of the outdoor stairways. Women with crying babes and toddlers in tow gossiped over yoke buckets, or else pounded soiled clothes in hooped tubs.

No citizen was ill-fed. The matrons’ stout arms gleamed with bracelets. Some wore gemstone beads and enamel, and others, fine rings of wrought wire. The garments they scrubbed for their households were plain: stout broadcloth biased with wool, but not ragged. As Fianzia invited, the hampers were shared, food and wine passed with cheerful camaraderie.

While Fionn Areth and Jeynsa did a groom’s work, and steadied the draught team’s bridles, Fianzia sat down on the lowered tail-board. Patient, she listened to whatever subject the women who gathered might broach. She answered their questions, no matter how difficult, making no effort to hide that the siege would draw Lysaer’s might to attempt their destruction. Duke Bransian had set aside barracks space. All families were invited to shelter within the Paravian-built walls of the upper citadel. Folk need do no more than submit their names to be assigned to a billet.

Several voices protested.

‘We can’t leave our craft shop!’

‘My husband’s smithy is all of our livelihood!’

Fianzia set down her wine goblet. ‘Whoever decides not to evacuate won’t be left abandoned without due protection.’ She qualified through the expectant silence, as molasses sweets quieted the fretful children, and the pearl cincture just unwound from her hair was dangled to distract a wailing infant. ‘No less than the duke’s immediate family are entrusted to shoulder your safety.’

While the baby burbled and sucked on the pearls, Mearn’s lady backed up her assertion: besides Parrien’s fleet, harrying the coast with the ferocity of a wolf pack, Sevrand commanded the garrison at the Sea Gate, and the sentinel turrets flanking the harbour mouth. Field divisions under Keldmar secured the outlying farm-steads for the crofters, who cured the winter’s meat in the smoke-houses and gathered the last cutting of hay.

Fianzia asked Fionn Areth to verify fact: that the captains at large stood with the front ranks, backing Bransian’s staunchest veterans. Through Talvish, the grass-lander knew the details of Vhandon’s latest strike forays. He was urged to describe the rings of set traps, engineered to bloody the enemy advance.

Since clan custom required a father’s presence at birth, Mearn was the brother kept closest. ‘My husband has charge of the outermost walls.’ A steady hand laid on her swollen stomach, Fianzia finished her reassurances.

‘Why doesn’t she mention the trebuchets, or the placement of the new ballista?’ Fionn Areth demanded of Jeynsa at a spiked whisper.

‘Because every citizen born under s’Brydion rule has studied the engines of war. Didn’t you notice the crews at their drill? They’re craftsfolk.’ Jeynsa swiped off the flies that bothered the harness horse under her charge, then added, ‘Defence of these homes will not be left to chance. Every one of these wives knows her archery. The young here learn sword-play as school-children.’

Yet arrows and stone-shot and skilled handling of weapons could not stop an avatar wielding raw light.

Fionn Areth cringed, gut-sick to recall the legitimate claims: accounts sworn by townsmen elsewhere, that insisted clan mothers in the wilds of Deshir raised their children to wage bloody war. Daring, impatient, he pressed for the truth, if only to silence his conscience. ‘If Tal Quorin’s slaughter was not a mistake, s’Ilessid justice will make a clean end to the lie that puts steel in the hands of the innocent.’

Jeynsa did not strike him. She stared him down, until the unquiet shadow that darkened her eyes hackled him to clamped teeth.

Then she said, ‘I’d have you witness the head-hunters’ league at their work. Before being spread-eagled for rapine, then butchered with my scalp cut as trophy fringe on a saddle-cloth, I will teach my daughters to use a sharp knife. Or my sons, that your false avatar’s mercy would see cuffed in irons and branded for slavery.’

‘Only the criminal condemned row the galleys,’ Fionn Areth retorted. ‘Do you clansfolk not also slaughter for lies? How many of these people have been told they’ll raise arms for a turncoat spy’s act of treason?’

Jeynsa’s smile was savage. ‘Listen and learn.’

For a ruddy laundress now broached the issue headlong. ‘Has anyone in Alestron borne recent witness to the s’Ilessid’s rogue powers of Light?’

‘Since Vastmark? Mearn has, when he served the duke’s wiles as ambassador sent to Avenor.’ Fianzia delivered the harsh assessment, unflinching. ‘He would urge you, each one, to value your lives before your possessions.’

The impact of her quiet statement turned heads, that her husband was not stationed above the Mathiell Gate, beyond risk of the front line of fire. As nothing else could, the poise of Mearn’s lady defined the steely integrity upholding the s’Brydion defence.

Tensioned quiet remained, torn by a wail as an aunt reached to rescue the pearls from the infant, who stuffed the whole string in his drooling mouth. No untouched observer, the lady tousled the babe’s curls, then graciously left him the gift of her mangled jewellery. ‘Keep your nephew and all of your kinsfolk safe,’ she said, and smiled, and retired to the driver’s seat on the wagon. ‘As you will, give your names to the quartermaster at the gate-house garrison.’

‘Never! Not while your husband’s at risk,’ the smith’s raw-boned relative declared. ‘Should our courage be any less than your own?’

Mearn’s lady inclined her head. She gathered the reins of the team in firm hands, while her oddly rankled young escort clambered aboard to ride on.

Stop after stop, Fianzia heard questions and spoke, and consoled countless fretful children. Her rounds did not finish until the last hamper was emptied. By then, the late shadows bled the warmth and colour out of the teeming streets.

The wagon team climbed uphill towards home. Fionn Areth and Jeynsa sat elbow to elbow on the dropped tail-board, backs nestled against the stacked basketry, while the flies buzzed over the lees in the wine jugs. Barking dogs, the screams of scavenging gulls, and the horn-call that foreran the watch change carried through the grind of the wheels. Day fled, while the shingle roofs dropped away in stepped tiers to the patchwork of fields, far beneath.

Against the cries of a street vendor hawking two penny charms for young lovers, the goatherd laced into contention again. ‘You don’t believe that your crown prince is blameless.’

‘Did you see nothing in front of your eyes?’ Jeynsa shoved erect, cold fire in her jade eyes. ‘Do you think those families don’t deserve to survive? Or that the indulgence of one man’s sensibilities should be gratified at their expense? Why not ask Fianzia what kind of legacy she would leave to her unborn child? Life’s owed, for a life.’

Certainly, there, history spoke in support: the s’Brydion withdrawal from Lysaer’s campaign had salvaged the Master of Shadow’s entrenched fight in Vastmark. Because of Mearn’s warning, rushed out of Avenor, Tysan’s clansmen had sent the timely message that enabled Dakar to unmask the Koriani snare laid to trap Arithon at Riverton.

‘I don’t call my liege to account for the sake of position, or lineage,’ said Jeynsa s’Valerient with unblinking candour. ‘I came because I believe in defending the lives of civilians. One might ask, Fionn Areth: what besides rancour draws you?’

‘Truth,’ the mulish Araethurian insisted. ‘Since I lost a misplayed challenge at arms, I was promised the chance to determine whether your prince is a criminal killer. He’s already been condemned, by Alliance decree.’ Passion flamed, in blind disregard. ‘At heart, do you know? Is your Teir’s’Ffalenn the minion of evil declared by Lysaer as Spinner of Darkness?’

To which sweeping mouthful, Fianzia interjected, ‘Rathain’s prince is a man. Human enough to rue his mistakes and to challenge his outworn assumptions. That’s what Mearn said, when I put the question. Grandame Dawr’s tart wisdom agrees. If Liesse held the influence to batter her duke off his bone-headed complacency, I would not be lending false comfort to matrons! Alone, without loyalty to my marriage, I’d give birth at old Tirans, secure in the wilds of Atwood!’

The pinnacle towers of the citadel were bathed in the fading light of the afterglow, while twilight deepened over the outlying fields. To the captains at arms who safeguarded the ground before the remorseless advance, the swish of the crofters’ scythes through the hayfields kept time to the tramp of the Alliance troops who marched in to the boom of the drums. The enemy established their lines beyond bowshot. They raised the banners of East Halla’s towns, and other, far-northern garrisons, inbound from the sea routes past Vaststrait.

Alestron’s farm-hands set their sweating backs to their work. Strove to turn a blind eye, even while harried by the intermittent whine of an arrow, or the punching crack of loosed crossbolts as hostile archers tested their range. The grain shocks were gathered and tied. Fodder was roped onto carts under torch-light, while across the plain, more fires lit the enemy, swarming to close for the siege.

‘They’ll have us bottled within a few days,’ observed the grizzled scout, arrived overdue with fresh blood on his hands to recite his dismal report. ‘Time to leave them a singeing wee present and run, if you’ll hear my considered opinion.’

Keldmar laughed. ‘Soon enough, laddie! Get along. Clean your knives. Rest and grab a hot meal.’ To Vhandon, who leaned with his back to a sheep-gate, taciturn as weathered teak, he mused, ‘Damn well not soon enough to sow havoc!’

The craggy field-captain never minced words. ‘You’ve planned your parting gift for these invaders?’

‘Haven’t we just!’ Keldmar’s raffish stubble split with delight. ‘The cook’s cobbled up a spiked broth to be left on the hobs in the farm-wives’ kitchens. Tastes like your granny’s savoury soup. Goes down slick as butter besides. Too late, the Light’s dupes’ll be gushing like gossips, but from the duff end, doubled at the latrines.’

‘Ath wept!’ Vhandon had always been sharp on his feet. ‘He used unboiled swamp water?’

Keldmar’s smile turned evil. ‘Dysentery’s no damned fun in the field. Make a few whimpering pansies bolt for home, once their bung-holes chap raw and start bleeding. And anyway, bowmen cramped up with the squirts will have a rough time taking aim.’ His sideward squint narrowed. ‘Are you frisky, tonight? I’ve an errand needs running inside enemy lines.’

‘Never ask,’ Vhandon stated. ‘My troop’s at the ready.’

They would be more than keen; Keldmar’s sibling had once loaned this war-captain to Arithon to clear a debt for mishandling. The veteran campaigner had been returned, but resharpened: depth now ran beneath that straight-thinking intelligence.

Though Keldmar shared the s’Brydion penchant for armed force, he was not the brainless brawn he appeared, to blindside his opponents. As he realized the older man measured his mood, he looked away.

‘I want you to go in yourself,’ he declared. ‘Have the villagers’ hedge witch fashion some talismans to muddle Lysaer’s sighted priests. Then pick ten from your company and find out when the false avatar plans to arrive.’

Vhandon took pause. Then he said, gently blunt, ‘Since my presence should not be required for that mission, what do you fear to expose?’

Keldmar’s frown tightened. He was never easy with intimate questions. Vhandon was his elder by more than ten years; had been the mentor he had stretched to match in callow youth as example. Never Bransian’s prized field officer by accident, all but a part of the family, now Vhandon was given the role of a scout whose assignment ran beyond dangerous.

‘Why?’ Vhandon prompted, as silence extended, thick with the tang of banked cookfires, and the musty scent after hard frost. ‘What do you dread for me, or yourself?’

‘Avenger’s own death!’ Keldmar swore. ‘I’d not send you to a sure end as a suicide!’

‘No,’ Vhandon agreed. Tonight, against his natural grain, he let down his granite mask. ‘But both of us have too much seasoned experience. Survival may force me to return your answer by signal arrow, then stage my escape through the far side of the lines. If you want me shut safely out of this war, I deserve to know what you’re thinking.’

Keldmar recoiled, then curbed his venomous retreat. ‘Ath, I can’t hide this! We’ve fought at each other’s shoulder for too long.’ How he hated to grapple the emotions he preferred to vent, picking blustering fights. ‘You realize Jeynsa’s decision must break Prince Arithon’s ultimatum. With his Grace gone, you freely gave your loyalty back to Alestron. But sitting here, I don’t know how to ask what you feel.’ Anguished, he clenched the fists crossed at his knee. ‘Are you fighting because Bransian gave no other choice? Or do you honestly think we can win this?’

Before Vhandon’s response, Keldmar smashed on, ‘If the Master of Shadow returns to spare Jeynsa, how will you reconcile your split allegiance?’ Then, ‘No!’ he snapped, over stripped nerves and hurt, ‘No, don’t speak! I’ve granted you space to choose your own fate because I don’t want to hear how you’ll answer!’

‘I’ll tell you, anyway,’ Vhandon persisted. ‘Doubt packs more damage, kept secret.’ His stalwart manner ploughed on with an eloquent care that was new. ‘I don’t know what the future will bring us, or what fate may befall your brothers. But my birthright lies here. This is my home ground. I won’t be dusting my hands of our friendship, or bolting for Atwood.’ Through a tensioned breath, he regarded the sky, pricked by cold stars and a rising moon through the gathering sea-mist. His form was a statement of unshattered strength, from the trim of his officer’s surcoat, to the competent hang of his sword and his matched brace of knives.

That self-possession lent Vhandon the vulnerable daring to hazard the rest. ‘There are depths to Prince Arithon few understand. I’ve lost my temper with him often enough. And bled from the heart every time I’ve encountered the mercy he shields behind satire. That hurt made me change. I had to drop every rigid concept I held over the meaning of honour. Though I don’t see your duke’s act of war the same way, I won’t disown my roots. If your citadel stands, it will be for right reasons. If it falls, what survives will be raised out of ruin, reforged with more flexible temper.’

Though Keldmar’s casual posture was forced, and the grip on his knee now was shaking, Vhandon finished off with a love that exposed without flinching.

‘My commitment is made to serve Alestron. Lean on the fact I will stay here. Our needs have never been separate, my friend. Brought against his free will, his Grace of Rathain is going to be savaged by pressures no one can foresee. You will need a bridge. If your family name can survive this unscathed, you’ll have Talvish and me at your side to stand as liaison.’

Keldmar pushed erect, too embarrassed to bare his own spirit. ‘You don’t need to go, personally,’ he allowed, cringing red. ‘Any ten trusted scouts are sufficient to handle this foray instead.’

‘No, friend, they’re not.’ Vhandon surveyed the man who had grown in his shadow, since their earliest days wielding practice sticks. They had shared the joy. The same punishment, too, nursing the bruises and triumphs that raised them to mastery-at-arms. For all Keldmar’s juggernaut muscle and will, despite the courage that wedded his life to s’Brydion defence, he nursed a bitter uncertainty. Tonight, no sharpened sword or soft word could assuage the storm raging inside him.

His blood heritage had been hounded by enemies for too long. Survival came at too high a cost for a blindfolded leap on another man’s faith.

As darkness fell, marred by the fires and smoke of the enemy war host, the field-captain longest in active service held his peace. He knew not to try his titled commander with a comforting clasp on the shoulder. ‘I will go in myself,’ he insisted, flat calm. ‘But only to prove my conviction as truth to rely on, when I return.’

The second Alliance entourage was dispatched to confront the s’Brydion stronghold at daybreak, well after Vhandon’s picked squad had departed.

This pass, the approach to Alestron’s barred gate was attempted by the Alliance’s gaunt Lord Justiciar. That worthy proposed no amicable settlement. Clad in arrogance and finery, he bore the Light’s sealed arraignment against the recalcitrant duke and his blood family. No one spared time for his pompous town document, sent by a posturing upstart. Since his glittering cavalcade never asked leave, Bransian also declined every civil respect. No safe conduct was granted.

Lysaer’s polished state overture encountered, instead, Keldmar’s entrenched field troop, and one arrow, shot dead-centre through the cloth-of-gold blazon worn by its delegate.

The corpse was packed off at an indecorous gallop. Pounding after the caparisoned horse, the Light’s ceremonial escort took panicked flight, spurred ragged by more hostile volleys released by Alestron’s crack marksmen. Sunwheel banners made irresistible targets, flushed into routing retreat. Cocky defenders leaped at the excuse to display their frustrated prowess. The exercise inspired Keldmar’s outlying companies to skilled contest and spirited wagers. No one else died. But the avatar’s stainless, white standard returned, sliced to fluttering rags in the hands of the rattled bearer.

The savaged procession reached friendly lines. Too hot to rein up, they belted in lathered disorder through the troop tents of the central encampment. If they dressed their torn ranks before they slowed down, nothing could mend their decorum. The murdered corpse of Lysaer’s titled emissary woke turmoil and rage in its wake. Camp-followers shouted. Wash women and cooks broke away from their wagons to scream with indignation. Dedicates and new recruits faltered at arms drill, then jumped as their sergeants barked to upbraid their strayed focus.

Through the tolling bells of alarm, and the outcries of furious priests, the officers bugled for order. The sharpened swords, and the honed sinew of men might be promised for war against Shadow. But not before the Light’s avatar chose to unsheathe the aimed spear of his vengeance.

Therefore, the horse with its blood-stained burden was passed through the innermost check-point. The mauled cavalcade crossed the gamut of garrison flags and filed past the officers’ quarters. Now trailed by an irate mob of captains, they came to a stop at the white-and-gold canopy that fronted the Sunwheel pavilion.

The experienced strategist from new Tirans held charge of the Alliance command, ranked second beneath the Lord Sulfin Evend, still absent to levy troops on the southcoast. A blustery man not given to patience, he burst from the tent in a spatter of shaving soap to dress down the tumultuous intrusion. His balding servant chased after, in vain: the offered towel was hammered aside by the livid standard-bearer, who brandished his shredded banner and howled in shame for the injury.

‘By Dharkaron’s Spear, I haven’t gone blind!’ The lather was swiped off with an immaculate bracer, while the displaced equerry winced. ‘We’re not here to mince words over etiquette! Nor is an enemy who won’t negotiate any cause for hysterics!’

The field-captain advanced on the clustered horsemen. A hulking tyrant, he silenced their clamouring and issued brisk orders for the slaughtered envoy. ‘Bear our casualty inside. Then bring the women who work for the healers. I want the Lord Justiciar’s body laid out straightaway. He’ll be honoured in state with new robes and candles. Move to it! Clean him up before the Blessed Prince and his retinue arrive with the Mayor of Kalesh!’

Two liveried servants left at a sprint, while the armed hotheads set hands to drawn swords, prepared to rally the ranks.

‘Stand down!’ barked the captain. ‘No one moves without leave! Damn you, those horses are too hot to be standing. Where are the boys to attend them?’

The chastised riders dismounted, while the idle grooms jumped to take charge of their blowing mounts.

Engulfed by that bottled-up swirl of banked rage were two onlooking bumpkin recruits. They still wore the sunburn of toil in the field, rough-clad in the stained boots and coarse cloth of crofters.

‘You there!’ bawled the thick-set master of horse, too overburdened not to collar the available by-standers. ‘Hop to! We’ve got bridles to clean and soiled brass that needs polish!’

The pair were shoved forward by one of the sergeants and heaped with armloads of stripped harness. The older one tugged his grey forelock and bent to unbuckle stained bits, while his freckled companion fetched a bucket and rag, and crouched over the task foisted on them.

‘We’re hooked, now,’ the younger one fretted, as pandemonium continued to inflame the surrounding Alliance encampment. ‘We’ve got to reach Keldmar. Dharkaron’s black bollocks, he’s got to be warned the false avatar’s due on the front lines in an hour!’

Vhandon buffed the rimed dirt from a curb chain and frowned. ‘Be still! Mind your tongue. Slouch your posture, and damned well stop acting desperate. We’ve got to wait for a safe opening to slip out.’

The impatient scout with him snatched up the next head-stall. ‘What if the moment fails to present?’

Vhandon shrugged, absorbed. ‘Then we do our best to create one. If we fail, there’s no gain in suicide. We bide on the hope that someone from our party finds his chance and wins through.’

Climbing sun burned off the last wisp of sea-mist. The camp hummed, set in ominous order, with too many sentries left sharp at their posts in the atmosphere of agitation. The two covert observers cleaned bridles with lowered heads, while Tirans’ abrasive captain at arms convened a council of war. He could not give the order to deploy the Light’s troops. But zeal could ensure the men were prepared to fight at a moment’s notice.

The shed pile of harness was only half-cleaned, when Lysaer s’Ilessid arrived on his dappled charger. He reined in, a white cloud against storm amid the mounted guard wearing the silver-and-sable surcoats of Kalesh. From shining blond hair to immaculate appointments, to eyes glinting blue as cut sapphire, the avatar’s presence seared sight to witness. Men in his shadow were reduced to servants, but never so callously disregarded. Lysaer’s smile of welcome to his least groom made the bearded, blunt mayor in his gaudy wealth an overstuffed caricature.

Both men dismounted. For an instant, the attentive descent of trained staff obscured the immediate view.

Then the acting captain at arms shoved from the shaded pavilion. Massive and rumpled, he forced his way through. Man and horse, groom and equerry, the tableau before the staked standards and awnings crystallized to expectation.

Sunlight shone down on snowy silk and cold majesty as the dawn’s urgent news reached the Blessed Prince.

‘Ath above, show us mercy and sense!’ murmured Vhandon, unwittingly stunned. No thought had prepared him as his lungs stopped with awe. He had never expected such beauty and strength, or the impact of Lysaer s’Ilessid’s innate charisma.

Every retainer’s rapt face showed that grace. His brief smile to the least, insignificant page could have fuelled a torch by sheer caring.

Before this, the patient years spent unravelling Arithon’s reticent quiet became as a dream, scoured off by noon heat.

Then the moment passed. The pavilion’s flap was thrust open again. More ranking officers rushed out in a pack, declaiming Keldmar’s brute ferocity. Lysaer asked them for calm. Against abashed silence, he demanded the recount of his Lord Justiciar’s murder.

There came no self-righteous cry to raise arms. No flourish of trumpets to strike in retaliation. Lysaer stood firm. Upright as the poised spear-shaft, he heard through his officers’ riled account with focused attention. That stillness gripped him for one second more. Not a diamond stud on his gold-braided collar flashed in the flood of the morning.

Then he said, ‘Fetch the banner-bearer who carried the Light’s abused standard. I want a front-rank witness to corroborate.’

‘But of course!’ Flushed by self-conscious embarrassment, the subordinate captain from Tirans backed down. Movement ruffled the packed horsemen as he sent an equerry, bearing the summons. Liveried grooms crept on with their chores, apologetically gathering reins and running up dangling stirrup-irons. Inert in their midst, Kalesh’s flummoxed mayor watched the proceedings like dead wood.

‘Carry on,’ murmured Lysaer. His wave dismissed the hovering escort. Sun burned through his jewels, as he raised taut fingers and raked back his sweat-damp blond hair. For that brief moment, he averted his face, a seamless pause, apparently made to ease his overwrought company. The wise leader with set-backs allowed his fraught men to vent their unconstrained reactions.

Yet the perfect, staged move granted Vhandon full view, as the impact touched Lysaer’s expression.

He looked tortured with pain. Sorrow transformed his face. Given his stance, he now had to act, regardless of personal preference. He was no born killer. Only a man, dedicated to courage, who carried a steadfast commitment. He commanded selflessly, and without stint. But never without thought: and not without feeling the hideous cost for the retribution he must now carry forward.

Soul spoke, in that instant of scalding agony, torn down to honest revulsion. For Lysaer’s sworn covenant to stay unbroken, he would bear the weight of the service he had pledged all his resource to defend.

Then the distraught standard-bearer arrived. Lysaer straightened to meet him; reforged the façade that claimed to be avatar, and with the purity of his conviction, requested the spoken truth.

Hush fell over the officers gathered for council. Their advice was not asked. None ventured to speak, while the barbaric fate of the Light’s dead ambassador became repeated in full. Lysaer s’Ilessid did not interrupt. Every inch of him royal, he listened as though each stammered word was the last sound in the world.

Then, as fresh anger savaged the ranks, shouting for blood in redress, Lysaer raised his fist.

Silence descended. ‘Fetch another white stallion,’ he bade. ‘Bridle and saddle him in full state panoply.’

As his dismounted lancers crowded and begged for the chance to bear arms as his vanguard, Lysaer turned them down. ‘I have no need for protection! No call to risk you, or rely on your bravery. Not for this, the opening hour that the Light is called to scour this land of hypocrisy.’

‘You will burn them out!’ exclaimed the war-captain from Tirans. ‘Rout the enemy with fire until the citadel boils to magma!’

‘I support no such cruelty!’ Lysaer pealed back. His cool purpose was unassailable, a chiselled display that cowed those men closest, and pressed the faint-hearted to unwitting retreat. Justice enforced the gap between the aroused dedicates and their hailed idol.

‘The enemy captain of Alestron’s field defences was the man who delivered the honourless order to fire. His archers enacted this uncivilized death. The farm-hands they defended condoned the crime. These are the guilty. I shall not tear down walls! Or destroy innocent town citizens over an action they did not commit!’

The crestfallen officer flushed. Around him, his fellows shifted, abashed, as though the ground trembled beneath them.

Against that crushed pause, where none dared opinion, the Mayor of Kalesh cleared his throat and clapped the shoulder of Lysaer’s white surcoat. ‘My Blessed Lord! That’s ingenious strategy! Of course, if you raze the field troops alone, those trapped inside the citadel will mew themselves up. They’ll crowd in panic and stress their own garrison, while we set our leisurely course for a siege.’ His shark’s smile widened. ‘We can watch in comfort as the s’Brydion fortress becomes overburdened, then starved to submission.’

Lysaer s’Ilessid’s smile curdled with frosty politeness. ‘Quite, as you say.’ He sucked a sharp breath. ‘Except, for civility, I will deliver their barbaric duke his due warning.’

His poised fist stirred. Lean fingers snapped, once. Out of clear air rose a pillar of light. The beacon pierced like a needle towards heaven, dazzling unshielded sight. The self-proclaimed avatar shone for the masses. He became as the blade of the unsheathed sword, crowned in white fire and diamonds.

‘Mercy!’ gasped Vhandon, forgetting the young scout, who shared equal danger beside him.

How could any man bear to witness such splendour? How not to become bedazzled by triumph? Could any mortal mind fail to be stirred by the clarion cry to honour the moral high ground?

‘Mercy alive!’ Vhandon wept, torn in pieces, and all but seduced by the lure of sheer fascination. Such glory could not do other than blaze. Every last blinded follower would marry their efforts to what seemed a lofty ideal. Those who cheered with their dazed eyesight sealed would hurl themselves into a life-and-death struggle. By sheer mass and numbers, they would kill every standing troop caught in their path.

Vhandon ached for hope’s loss. He was alone, clenched fast in the breach. His hand was not other than human. No field-captain possessed a sorcerer’s wisdom. To denounce the false avatar in the enemy camp could only bring swift self-destruction. The horrific thought chilled him: that he was informed. Had he not held an intimate association with Arithon, he would not have escaped the insanity. Would not have grasped what these followers never had grace to perceive: that this war had been seeded by Desh-thiere’s curse. If not for the memory of a clearer music, called forth from a Paravian-made sword, Vhandon realized he could have been swept off his feet. Too easily, ignorance swayed decent men to cast their lot with the Light’s mustered soldiers.

Yet he had heard. His vision saw past ennobled passion as the bridled white stallion arrived, and its blond rider accepted the reins. Lysaer received the dazzled salutes of his officers, then strode forward to mount.

Which left ten s’Brydion liegemen still masked under cover inside the enemy’s camp. They could send no word, before the forces unleashed. Make no move, lest they risk their companions. Alone, they held out on the rags of torn will. For they knew, beyond doubt: their duke’s brash defiance was futile.

Such rage masked under self-righteous nobility would spark the irrevocable fire and not rest until the citadel was reduced to ashes.

Autumn 5671