Читать книгу Murder in Lamut - Raymond E. Feist, Joel C. Rosenberg - Страница 8

VANDROS NOTICED SOMETHING.

A hint of Lady Mondegreen’s scent of patchouli and myrrh still hung in the air of the Aerie, although probably nobody else would have been able to detect it over the sulphuric stink of the breath of Fantus, the green firedrake, who had just belched with satisfaction after arriving from his evening meal in the kitchen below.

The Earl of LaMut and his swordmaster exchanged glances as the creature settled in before the fire. The Swordmaster hadn’t been amused by the firedrake’s presence, and even less so by the fact that Fantus had selected the Aerie as his residence-of-choice, probably for its ease of access through the old Falconer’s roost.

Vandros was still uncertain how the creature contrived to get the door open between the Swordmaster’s quarters and the loft above where previous rulers of LaMut had housed their hunting birds for decades. It now held what Steven Argent thought was a thoroughly inadequate assortment of messenger pigeons, under the care of Haskell, the pigeon breeder, to whom Steven Argent sarcastically referred as ‘the Birdmaster’ – although not in Vandros’s direct hearing.

Haskell was supposed to keep the firedrake up in the loft, but the only doors he was careful about locking were the doors to his charges’ cages, each one labelled ‘Mondegreen Keep’ or ‘Yabon’ or ‘Crydee’ or wherever the occupant bird’s raising and instinct would cause it to return to when released; Haskell was much less reliable when it came to the door to the loft.

Even when Swordmaster Steven Argent himself bolted the door, the drake managed to get down the narrow stone steps and gain entrance to the Swordmaster’s bedchamber. But in the last few days Argent had apparently resigned himself to the creature being his lodger until the Duke of Crydee returned from his council up in the City of Yabon and collected the drake in the spring.

Fantus sighed in obvious satisfaction, extending its long, serpentlike neck, and let its chin rest on the warm stones before the hearth. Large wings folded gracefully across its back, the reflecting flames gave crimson and gold accents to the green scales of its body.

The firedrake had arrived a week earlier with Lord Borric’s court magician, Kulgan, and when the Duke of Crydee and his entourage had departed two days before for the general staff meeting at Duke Brucal’s castle in Yabon City, Fantus had stayed behind.

No one was quite sure what to do about it; most of the staff and household were too frightened by the small dragonlike creature to do more than get out of its way on its daily forays to the kitchen for food; though a few, like the Earl, were amused by it.

If Vandros was put off by the smell, he was discreet enough not to say a word about it, and neither did the habitually glum servitor who placed a tray down on the table and then poured each of them a glass of wine before setting the bottle back on the tray.

‘Is there anything else required, Swordmaster?’ Ereven asked Steven Argent instead of Vandros – and quite properly so, for while Vandros outranked the Swordmaster, and the entire castle was his residence, as the Earl of LaMut, the Aerie was the Swordmaster’s quarters, and the housecarl was officially helping Steven Argent, as host, entertain the young Earl, it being the host’s duty to see to the comfort of his guest.

Steven Argent smiled his appreciation to the servitor; the Swordmaster appreciated the fine points of hospitality, as well as of any other craft.

‘Nothing at all, thank you, Ereven,’ he said, after a quick nod from Vandros. ‘Consider your service over for the evening, and do give my best to Becka and to your daughter.’

Ereven’s already-gloomy face darkened slightly, although he forced a smile. ‘I’ll do that, Swordmaster, and bid you and his lordship a goodnight.’

Vandros didn’t quite raise an eyebrow at that; he held his peace until Ereven had closed the door behind him. Not that he would have commented anyway. The Swordmaster’s dalliances were legendary, but to take note of them at the moment would be impolitic, whether or not the rumoured dalliance was with the housecarl’s very pretty young daughter (not true) or with Lady Mondegreen (true). Steven Argent was both a soldier and a lady’s man, and his success in both fields of endeavour had propagated envy and enmity from many important men in the region. Several times in the last two decades the fact that Argent had merely exchanged polite conversation with a minor noble or rich merchant’s wife had resulted in confrontation, and once in a duel. That duel had been the primary reason he had abandoned a fastrising career in the King’s army in Rillanon to come to the west twelve years ago, first as a captain in Vandros’s father’s garrison, then as Swordmaster. Although Vandros usually came across as a straightforward, uncomplicated warrior, he had spent most of his twenty-eight years studying to become the Earl of LaMut, and he could be as subtle as he needed to be: he knew when not to make a comment.

When the door closed, he said, ‘I still find it hard to believe that there is a traitor among us. But …’

‘… but there have been too many accidents of late,’ Steven Argent finished. ‘And I find myself uncomfortable assuming that all is well. Things have been too quiet in the north – and one of the things I learned when you were still in swaddling clothes was that when things seem to be going too well it’s time to look for a trap.’

‘But how could the Tsurani even identify and locate a traitor? It’s not as if one could put on Kingdom clothing and wander into Ylith pretending to be a merchant from Sarth. Do they even have the capacity for that kind of plotting?’

Steven Argent shook his head. That was, it seemed, the part he didn’t understand, either.‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but I am concerned. Of course, if there is a traitor, he isn’t necessarily employed by the Tsurani. If they were trying to kill someone, it would hardly be a baron, albeit an important one. They would be hunting earls and dukes, I’d wager. No, when it comes to sponsors for murder, we’ve too many other likely candidates to ignore. I’ve little fondness for Baron Morray – the feud between his and Baron Verheyen’s families should probably have been settled by duel a generation ago, and he’s made more than enough other enemies as well – but I think it would be best to make sure that he is not killed while in our city. It would tend to irritate the Duke.’

Vandros smiled at that. ‘Nor, I can say with some greater authority, would it please the Earl.’

‘To be struck down in battle? We could live with that; that’s a risk we all take. But …’

Vandros sighed. ‘I find it hard to believe that Lord Verheyen would countenance such a thing. He’s hot-blooded and hot-headed, of a certainty. But suborning murder? That doesn’t sound like him.’ He shook his head.

Vandros’s father had appointed Morray as the LaMutian Military Bursar at the beginning of the war, and Vandros had ratified his father’s choice when he inherited the title two years earlier, since the man was good at the job. And as Earl, Vandros knew better than most that both an earldom – particularly during wartime – and an army, lived on gold and silver as much as on meat and grain.

If Steven Argent had had his way, the Earl would have sealed Baron Morray up in the Tower with his books and accounts and moneybags until every last Tsurani was driven from Midkemia, but that wasn’t politically possible, and even keeping him resident in the City of LaMut was starting to look like a bad idea.

Time to get him out of town, at least for a while.

‘It could be a coincidence. But there’s an old saying, my lord,’ the Swordmaster said. ‘“The first time is happenstance; the second time is remarkable coincidence; the third time is a conspiracy.”’

Vandros grinned. ‘I think my father should have chosen a good LaMutian as Swordmaster rather than some effete Easterner. Rillanon may be a good place to learn the fine points of swordsmanship, but I think that there is something about the Court that breeds not only conspiracy, but the suspicion of conspiracy, whether one exists or not.’

‘There are always conspiracies, my lord, somewhere.’

Vandros’s face darkened for a moment, and even though it remained unspoken, Argent knew what had passed through his mind. The rift between the King and the Prince of Krondor probably threatened the Kingdom in the long run every bit as much as the Rift through which the Tsurani had invaded. Rumours were running rampant: that the King had ordered his uncle the Prince imprisoned; that Guy du Bas-Tyra’s viceroyalty of the city was simply a pretext to install Guy as the next Prince of Krondor; and lately, that Prince Erland was in fact dead at Guy’s hand.

All official communication between the Armies of the West and Krondor passed through Brucal and Borric’s hands, and Vandros knew only what he was told, and as a matter of policy didn’t believe the half of it.

At least that is what he had told his swordmaster. Steven Argent didn’t know whether or not to entirely accept the Earl’s scepticism, although he knew better than to voice any doubts. After all, rumours were often the first harbinger of uncomfortable truth. But that was not something that the young Earl would want to admit, openly or otherwise. Bad blood was the way of the nobility, particularly in such unsettled times, when an heir apparent – to a barony or a duchy – might well die in battle, leaving the succession unclear. Steven Argent had seen it when hunting wolves: when you killed the leader of the pack, the lesser males would spend the next few weeks fighting over dominance while you hunted them down. But that was not a comparison that would have much appeal to Earl Vandros, despite the wolf’s head on his family’s crest. And bringing up matters of succession even in a general way would probably irritate the Earl, given that he was unaccountably touchy on matters concerning his own likely future as Duke of Yabon, once he finally married Duke Brucal’s daughter, Felina.

So Steven Argent changed the subject. ‘I think those of you in the West –’

‘You have served my father – and now me – for more than a dozen years, and to you still it’s “those of you in the West”?’ Vandros interrupted with a laugh.

‘– those of you in the West tend to underrate Easterners. We have our share of able soldiers and more than a few exceptional fighters, as well, for that matter.’

‘Perhaps.’ Vandros appeared unpersuaded. He was playfully taunting the Swordmaster. There had always been a rivalry between the Eastern and Western Realms of the Kingdom. The Earl knew that historically the constant border struggles with the Eastern Kingdoms had produced some of the best and most able commanders in the East, and some exceptional fighters, as well. It was the route to fast promotion and political opportunity, which is why ambitious soldiers often went east. For they would be fighting neighbouring armies under the gaze of barons, dukes, and kings, while most of the Western garrisons spent their time putting down bands of goblins and chasing outlaws under the supervision of swearing sergeants or the occasional officer. But seven years of constant warfare with the Tsurani had given the Armies of the West a hard core of blooded veterans, and new recruits every spring were quickly educated in warcraft or they were killed.

Or, often, both.

The Tsurani were harsh teachers in combat – tough enough that Vandros had been forced to hire mercenary companies to bolster his levies for the first time in the war – he just didn’t have enough able-bodied men to meet his commitment to the Duke of Yabon without hired swords to replace the dead and wounded. No, the Tsurani were harsh teachers in warfare, but LaMut’s soldiers had learned their lessons well; Earl Vandros would match his best company against the best from any Eastern garrison.

With a sly grin, Vandros said, ‘We both know our own worth on the battlefield.’

Steven Argent raised an eyebrow. ‘After you return from this next patrol, would you care to discuss this further on the training floor?’

There was an art to acceptably threatening a member of the nobility, one that somebody could either be born with or learn from study, and Steven Argent had spent much of his adult life studying it, so he was not at all surprised when Vandros’s smile broadened.

‘I think not!’ Vandros laughed. ‘I’ve got bruises enough from you, Swordmaster.’ He sobered. ‘But back to the business at hand: Morray. You don’t think it’s a coincidence that he’s come so close to being killed?’

The Swordmaster shook his head. ‘A pot falling from a building, possibly – although there were none home in those flats at the time, as I understand it …’

‘Which argues that it might just have been the wind.’

Steven Argent nodded. ‘And the ice on Baron Morray’s step could have been from a spilled pitcher, and his horse’s saddle-strap might merely have been worn through from neglect, although I’d not care to suggest that to the Horsemaster.’

He walked to his desk and fingered the end of the strap that he had, himself, taken from the saddle for a close and careful examination. Yes, it had appeared to have been worn through, rather than cut, but he had been able to duplicate that effect himself by rubbing the strap against a sharp piece of stone.

‘It’s entirely possible that it’s just a coincidence. But it’s unlikely,’ Argent said.

‘But Verheyen? I know that there’s bad blood between the two, but assassination …?’

‘I’d doubt it, but I wouldn’t say it was impossible.’ Steven Argent shook his head. ‘I’d think that treason, somewhere, was more likely. I just have no idea as to who, or how, or why.’

‘I want this kept quiet,’ Vandros said. ‘We’re still at war, and that’s not a time for accusations to be wildly flailed about, not with the Council of Barons meeting here as soon as they can be gathered. I think it would be a good time to clear the air on these matters, among others.’

Steven Argent nodded. ‘That thought had occurred to me, as well. I think Baron Morray should be dispatched with a company of good men for the daily patrol, while I ask some discreet questions and see what I can find out.’

Morray had not particularly distinguished himself in the war, but he was not an embarrassment either, and it was a good idea to keep common soldiers under the eye, if not technically under the command, of a member of the nobility.

Vandros frowned. ‘Should we send him off to Mondegreen with the lady, and to help escort Baron Mondegreen back for the Baronial Council, perhaps? We’re about due to rotate baronial troops from both Mondegreen and Morray into LaMut – so sending him out to supervise that sounds to me like an even better idea.’

‘My lord is most wise. I’d venture a suggestion that it would be even better to keep him out of LaMut during the council as well, but –’

‘No. That would make me appear to take sides against him in his feud with Verheyen.’

Steven Argent nodded. ‘True enough, my lord.’ He knelt to scratch at Fantus’s chin. The skin of all dragonkind was tougher than good leather – he had to dig in with the massive ring he wore on his middle finger before the firedrake arched its back and preened itself.

Vandros nodded to himself. ‘Baron Mondegreen’s presence might well act to keep things calmer.’

‘Yes, indeed – he’s a sickly old man, but a gentle one,’ Steven Argent said. ‘Although there’s some steel under the surface, I’d say.’ He scratched at the firedrake’s neck again. ‘Nice, Fantus. Good boy.’

‘You have good men?’ Vandros asked.

‘All those who wear the tabard emblazoned with the crest of the Earl of LaMut are good men, of course.’

Vandros shook his head in irritation. ‘I mean, particularly good men? For this?’

‘I figured on Tom Garnett’s company,’ the Swordmaster said. ‘With three of the mercenaries along, as bodyguard for Morray.’ He bowed his head perfunctorily. ‘Assuming, of course, the Earl finds my suggestion suitable. It would be better, I think, if the orders came from you.’ Steven Argent was a soldier, and used to taking orders, but giving orders that involved the nobility was something he avoided, when possible.

Vandros nodded. ‘I will, and then I’ll have to leave this matter and all of LaMut in your hands; I’ve got to join Duke Brucal for the general staff meeting in Yabon next week, so I must leave today.’

‘You’ll bring back messenger pigeons?’

Vandros laughed. It was an ongoing by-play between them. Every time the Earl went somewhere, Argent would remind him to bring back messenger pigeons, as though he would have forgotten without the nagging. The Earl thought that Steven Argent was overly worried that there wouldn’t be the ability to get the word out quickly enough, should something of importance happen in LaMut, and the Earl had just dispatched what Steven Argent was sure were the last of the pigeons, confirming his imminent departure for Yabon.

‘Yes, I’ll bring back pigeons. And a few good bottles of wine for your legendary thirst, as well. You can play host to the fractious barons in my absence. Putting Mondegreen in charge of the meeting in my place might be a wise move. Both Morray and Verheyen respect the old man – as does every noble I can think of, except perhaps for that prancing fool, Viztria – and that should put them on their good behaviour. As for the possible assassin, I can trust you with this matter?’ the Earl asked.

Steven Argent nodded. ‘Of course, my lord,’ he said.

With the patrol sitting motionless in the middle of the road, it occurred to Kethol that he would have objected to Lady Mondegreen accompanying them, if he’d thought anybody would have listened to him.

But she and her two maids were due in Mondegreen, to minister to the ailing baron and accompany him back to LaMut for the Baronial Council – or, at least, she was due to stay out of noble beds in LaMut for the time being – and Baron Morray had insisted that the patrol might as well swing north to guard her on her way home. Which made sense, perhaps. A company of cavalry was due within a day or two from Mondegreen, and this way they could be pressed into service around the city itself, relieving the Earl’s troops.

The trouble with what Pirojil called ‘a creeping mission’ was just that: it crept, and grew, and crept and grew, until it was increasingly unmanageable.

What had at first been a routine patrol which was to swing north and west and then back to LaMut had become an escort for those bound both for Mondegreen, as well as those to be escorted back from both Mondegreen and Morray. Sandwiched between the front and the back of the column were easily two dozen civilians: Father Finty and the young boy that he called his altar boy but whom Pirojil suspected to be his catamite; three of those rare tame Tsurani – former slaves who surrendered meekly after their masters were killed – who had been hired as tenant farmers in some Mondegreen franklins’ holdings; Lady Mondegreen and her claque of ugly maids. An assortment of servants, porters, and lackeys rounded out the company.

Not that Kethol would have minded the lady’s company, under other circumstances: she was companionable and more than a little pleasant on the eye. Some women seemed to bloom in their late teens and early twenties, but were clearly past their prime, jowls and breasts already beginning to sag, hair going limp, by their thirtieth year. Not so for Lady Mondegreen. Except for one white streak that only added character to her long, coal-black hair, she could have passed for her late teens. Perhaps that had something to do with her childlessness, or her relationship to the conDoin family – they tended to age well.

Those who didn’t die in battle, that is.

Her face was heart-shaped, with a strong if pointed chin that would have seemed almost masculine if it weren’t for the full, ripe lips above. And even in her riding outfit, with layers of clothes underneath the short jacket, her breasts seemed perky enough to make the palms of his hands itch. Long, aristocratic fingers, nails bitten short in a lower-class touch that Kethol found utterly charming, gripped the reins with practised ease, while her slim thighs, encased in tight leather riding breeches, gripped her saddle tightly when her huge red mare pranced nervously while they waited. Ladies usually rode in a coach for long journeys, and she likely would have preferred that, but the most direct route from LaMut to Mondegreen went through some rough country, and she had taken to horseback with good grace, riding like a man, astride her mare rather than sidesaddle.

Behind her, on what appeared to be a matched pair of remarkably spavined and mottled geldings, her two maids huddled nervously into their cloaks, clinging tightly to the cantle, clutching their reins without actually communicating to the horses. They seemed content to follow along behind the mounts in front, which Kethol decided was probably the reason the Horsemaster had picked out these two hayburners for this journey. Occasionally, those behind would have to flick the rumps of the two geldings, moving them along when they stopped to crop at the side of the road. Perhaps, thought Kethol, they might even have some sense of how to ride by the time they reached Mondegreen.

It was hard for Kethol to tell Elga from Olga – was Elga the one with the slight moustache and large potbelly, or the heavy moustache and slight potbelly? He thought it important to correctly identify which was which. Women as poorly favoured as those two needed any consideration available; somebody who partnered with Pirojil should understand that, and Kethol did.

‘Easy, girl, easy,’ Tom Garnett murmured to his big black mare. Kethol never understood why somebody would want an animal that edgy – ‘high-spirited’, to use the accepted term – when perfectly decent, placid mounts were available. It seemed foolish. And Garnett’s mare appeared to be as hot-blooded as any horse Kethol had seen; the Captain had picked her for beauty and speed, he assumed, which was as stupid a choice as a mounted soldier could ever make. Now, a trained warhorse, that he could easily understand. He had seen more than one such trample infantry underfoot in battle, and while they were fractious, they were worth the effort; it gave the rider an extra weapon – four, if you counted each hoof separately, five if the horse was a biter. But a horse that was just plain nervous made no sense to Kethol under any circumstance. Well, at least the Captain had the good sense not to pick an uncut stallion as his mount, unlike that idiot they had served under in Bas-Tyra. That would be the last thing that anybody ever needed – a stallion going crazy because one of the maids was in her monthlies or a mare was in heat.

Tom Garnett had not liked the look of the stand of elms that guarded the far side of the clearing, and had sent a trio of horsemen ahead to scout for a possible ambush. The Tsurani were expected to be behind their lines for the winter, at least some twenty miles to the west of here, but Kethol had seen more than one corpse with a surprised expression on its face because things hadn’t turned out quite as had been expected.

The scouts were a sensible precaution. The Tsurani were no match in forest craft for the likes of the Natalese Rangers or for Kethol himself, granted, but they were learning quickly. Too quickly.

That was the trouble with making war on people without eliminating them to the last man: you killed the weak, stupid, and unlucky, leaving the strong, smart, and fortunate to face later on. If it was up to Kethol, the war would end with the Tsurani pursued to whatever vile pit they’d emerged from, and slaughtered right down to the last infant – despite the obviously preposterous stories about how many of them there were on Kelewan – but, at least for now, that issue wasn’t even on the table.

All told, it was more than a good argument for Kethol, Pirojil and Durine getting their pay and getting themselves out of here, just as soon as this council of barons was over, and the ice had cleared in the south.

Warm winds and soft hands …

Soon, perhaps. Although … He sniffed the air. He couldn’t have said how he knew, but there was a storm coming. Not soon, not right away. The sky to the west was clear and blue-grey, only the puffiest and most distant of clouds scudding across its surface. But there was a storm coming, and of that Kethol was sure.

Kethol glanced over to where Baron Morray waited, motionless, on his equally motionless mottled bay gelding. He was a big man, who would’ve seemed more pretty than handsome, if it wasn’t for a certain calculated ruggedness in his plain-cut greatcoat and the utilitarian dragonhide grip of the great sword that hung from his saddle in counterpoint to the short rapier that hung from his hip. His features were just too regular, too even, his clean-shaven face too smooth, his movements too fine and precise, when he moved at all.

His look at Kethol was filled with disdain.

‘As you can see, there was no reason for you to fear,’ he said, his voice pitched low enough to carry only as far as Lady Mondegreen and Captain Tom Garnett.

Kethol didn’t rise to the bait. What the Baron thought of him as he sat still while LaMutian regulars rode forward to scout was of no concern to him. He could more feel than hear Durine stirring behind him, while Pirojil’s face held that studiously neutral expression that spoke volumes about his opinion of people who criticized professional men in their work.

Tom Garnett came to their rescue, his nervous horse taking a few prancing steps that Garnett managed with just the bare twitch of his fingers on the reins, and a tightening of his knees against the saddle. ‘I’m afraid, I’m sorry to say, Baron Morray, that you misunderstand Kethol’s reluctance to ride ahead.’

‘Oh?’

Kethol shook his head minutely. Tom Garnett, too, eh?

As usual, it was for some reason incorrectly understood by people who really didn’t know the three of them that he, Kethol, was the leader of the three. Durine was too large and too quiet, and Pirojil was grotesquely ugly; for some reason, that tended to make people think that Kethol was somehow in charge of the other two.

‘I was with the Swordmaster when he assigned the three of them to protect you, Baron Morray,’ Tom Garnett went on. ‘I don’t remember him telling them that they were in your service.’

Unspoken was the fact that the Swordmaster hadn’t put Tom Garnett’s company under Baron Morray’s command, either; a distinction that seemed to escape Baron Morray more than occasionally.

Which was not surprising. Nobility tended to be punctilious about such things around other nobility, but less so around commoners, no matter what their military rank. That was one thing Kethol liked about working in the Western Realm of the Kingdom; while soldiers everywhere understood that nobility was no substitute for judgment and experience, out here you found the armies refreshingly free of ambitious office-seekers. Had Tom Garnett been back in the Eastern Realm, angling for a squire’s rank or marriage to a minor noble’s daughter, he’d have been kissing Morray’s backside and asking politely which cheek he preferred smooched first.

The forest loomed ahead, all grey and stark. It would be spring, soon, bringing green life back to the woods. That was the nice thing about the woods: you could count on a forest to regenerate itself, both from the ravages of winter and those of invaders.

People were different.

Tom Garnett signalled for the column to proceed, and Kethol kicked his horse into a quick canter that put him ahead of Baron Morray, while Durine and Pirojil took up their places beside the Baron.

After years of working together, he could almost read the minds of his companions without the need for any word being spoken between them. Kethol would take the lead, not because he was any more expendable than the other two – any more than he was the leader of the three – but because he had been raised in forested land, and his early years had tuned his senses to the smells and sounds and the silences of the forest in a way that could only be learned from birth.

Off in the distance, a woodpecker hammered away, almost loud enough to hurt his ears. Apparently the clopping of horses’ hooves on the hard, frozen ground wasn’t threatening enough to cause the bird to go silent.

Raising his hand for attention, Kethol gave out a forester’s shout, and the hammering desisted for a moment, only to take up again. Good. The bird was sufficiently wild to go silent in the presence of men, but sufficiently used to men to resume his work quickly; and that helped to verify that they were still alone in the forest.

He smiled as he rode. You could develop quite a legendary ability for being able to hear things in the woods if only you let the woodland creatures help you.

A cold wind picked up from the west, bringing a chill and a distant scent of woodsmoke, probably from some nearby franklin’s croft. Birch mixed with the tang of pine, if Kethol was any judge of woodsmoke, which he was.

Morray kept up a steady stream of complaints about his franklins, which Kethol listened to with only half an ear, and then only because the Baron griped better than most grizzled cavalry sergeants.

By edict of the Earl, and probably the Duke himself, the borders of a franklin’s croft were inviolable by the barons – who were always looking to increase their own holdings, and settle bondsmen on any vacant land – but the actual house itself was, in law and in practice, the property of the Baron, and while franklins were forbidden from expanding their wattle-and-daub buildings, the barons were required to make necessary repairs to ‘their’ property.

If you believed Baron Morray’s complaints, not only had Tsurani troops put the red flower to every thatched roof in his barony last autumn, forcing the Baron now to spend sizeable sums for the hire of carpenters, daubers, and thatchers, but the mud and straw of LaMut invariably crumbled if a harsh thought was sent in its direction.

Arrangements would have to be made with Baron Mondegreen, the earldom’s Hereditary Bursar, for some loans of Crown money, no doubt, and Baron Mondegreen was as famous for being stingy with Crown money as he was for his own personal generosity, and it was likely that there was some other conflict between the two, given that Morray was serving as the Earl’s wartime Bursar, if only because he was more mobile and healthy than Mondegreen was. His position would enable – and require – Morray to pay soldiers, fealty-bound or mercenary, as well as provisioning troops and suchlike; it would not permit him to dip into the Crown purse for repairs to his own barony.

For Morray to be tupping the Baron’s wife while trying to get him to authorize a loan was probably not the wisest of ways to proceed, but Kethol had long since decided that wisdom and nobility seemed to go together only by coincidence.

The farming road they were using to make their way through the North Woods wound down into a draw, and then up and out through a shallow saddle between two low hills. The Earl’s Road cut across the top of the hills, but it wasn’t the fastest way to Morray, or from there to Mondegreen.

Lady Mondegreen left her maids behind as she rode up beside him. He nodded a greeting, and idly touched a hand to his forehead.

‘I want to thank you for escorting me,’ she said. Her voice was surprisingly low and pleasantly melodic, like a baritone wind-flute.

‘You are, of course, welcome, my lady,’ Kethol said.

And never mind that it was none of his idea, and he would have been perfectly comfortable leaving her to wait for the next company of Mondegreen cavalry to be cycled back to the barony. The larger the party, the better, sure – but that was only when you were counting fighting men, not when you added on baggage like noble women, no matter how pleasing to the eye they might be.

‘There’s something … frightening about a late-winter forest,’ she said. ‘When you look at the branches out of the corner of your eye, they sometimes look like skeletal fingers, reaching out for you. Add a few black robes, and you might think you had the Dark Brotherhood on every side.’

She rode almost knee-to-knee with him, letting the others lag behind.

‘I guess that is so.’ Kethol nodded. ‘But I’ve always liked the forest. All forests.’

‘Even when it looks so bare and desolate?’ she asked, lightly.

‘Looks can be deceiving, Lady.’ His knife came to his hand without him having to have thought about drawing it; Kethol reached up and cut a twig from an overhanging branch. A blunt thumbnail cut through a grey bud on the twig, revealing the green hidden inside. ‘No matter how dead it looks, there’s always life hidden here,’ he said.

Ahead, ashy corpses of burned trees told of where a raging fire had scarred the forest. Kethol remembered that specific fire, which had been started by fleeing Tsurani troops, and his jaw clenched at the memory.

‘The winter trees are merely … sleeping,’ he said. ‘But, in fewer days than you care to think, if you’ll probe with your fingers or a stick at the base of that burned oak, you’ll see sprouts reaching out to the sky.’

‘I see.’

‘You will.’ He smiled. ‘Ten years from now, you won’t be able to tell that there was a Tsurani bastard who lit a fire here like a dog puking over food he can’t steal in order to prevent somebody else from eating it.’

He gestured with his twig at the top of the hill that rose up beside them. ‘And right over there, maybe twenty or thirty years from now, there will be a little stand of oaks – short ones, granted, but real trees, and not merely saplings – drawing their sustenance from the ground below.’

She laughed, the sound of distant silver bells. Kethol normally didn’t like being laughed at, but her laughter was in no way insulting.

‘Why, Kethol,’ she said, as though more in shock than surprise, ‘one would think you were a poetic philosopher, not a soldier. Oaks, you say? Why oaks, rather than elms or pines or beeches? And how could you know that they’ll grow there, and not somewhere else?’

‘I could –’ No. He caught himself, and forced a shrug. ‘I guess there is no way that I really could know,’ he said. ‘But I believe it will happen. Tell you what, Lady: come back in twenty years and think kindly of me if you find a stand of oaks here.’

‘I just might do that, Kethol,’ she said. ‘In fact, you may have my promise on it, and if you’re still serving the Earl, I’ll bet my silver real against your one copper that it will be elms or pines or something other than a stand of oaks, if you’d care to wager.’

He smiled. ‘Well, I doubt that I’ll still be in LaMut even come spring, but if I’m in the earldom twenty years from this day, I’ll knock on your castle gate, and ask to collect that bet.’

‘Or pay it.’ She raised an eyebrow, and smiled. ‘Unless you’d flee the earldom to avoid losing a copper?’

‘No, I wouldn’t do that, Lady.’

There was no point in mentioning that it was a safe bet, as the top of the hill was where he and Pirojil and Durine had buried the Tsurani Force Leader who had ordered the fire lit, scattering dozens of acorns over his bare chest before they had filled in the hole. The Tsurani’s eyes had gone wide as they started to shovel in the earth. But gagged with a leather thong that held his acorn-filled mouth half-open, he hadn’t said much beyond a few grunts, and hamstrung as he was at elbows, ankles, and thighs, he wasn’t going anywhere. They had not packed down the earth very hard after they buried him; he probably had at least a few minutes to think over the wisdom of having burned down that which he could not conquer.

Kethol didn’t mind the Tsurani having tried to kill him – that was business – but he took damage to a forest personally, and neither Durine nor Pirojil had raised a word of objection; they had just helped him shovel in the soil. He had no regrets, but burying a man alive wasn’t the sort of thing that he really wanted to mention to a pretty woman, much less a pretty noblewoman, not when she was flirting with him.

Which she clearly was.

That was probably just to make Baron Morray jealous, but that was fine with Kethol. His sleep would be warmed by thoughts of her this night, and if she slept under Baron Morray that did Kethol no harm.

Still…

They broke at midday for a skimpy meal of cold bread and sausage, washed down with water and a gillful of cheap wine for the soldiers, while the nobles shared a glass bottle of something finer.

Pirojil would have had the Tsurani ex-slaves water and feed the horses – they seemed well-tamed, after all, and didn’t quite get the notion that they were now free – but Tom Garnett had a different idea: as usual, one man from each squad was detailed to see to the animals of that squad, while the others ate and rested. There was little enough time to take your ease when you were on patrol, and it made sense to get what rest you could.

Pirojil didn’t argue. He just let Kethol take his turn seeing to their three horses, while Pirojil ate his bread and sausage quickly enough to avoid tasting it, then drank his wine even more quickly. It warmed him a little, as he huddled in his cloak against the cold.

Even so…

‘I’d best go see about watering something that needs watering,’ he said to Durine, as he slung his swordbelt over his left shoulder, then stalked off over the crest of the hill to relieve himself.

Below, one of the regulars, a lanky man with a bald patch on his scalp where a Bug had nicked him, took out a set of pipes, and another a small drum, and soon off-key renditions of old martial songs filled the air.

‘We are marching on Bosonia, Bosonia, Bosonia,

‘We are marching on Bosonia, Bosonia, today …’

The Tsurani, as usual, seemed confused. Presumably, in the Empire, soldiers didn’t sing or drum unless ordered to do so. They probably didn’t fart unless explicitly instructed. These former slaves would find things much looser in service to the local nobles and franklins.

Pirojil’s lips tightened. The Tsurani were even worse than were the Kingdom regulars when it came to showing individuality. What was there about a regular soldier’s life that robbed him of any initiative?

He relieved himself quickly behind the broad bole of an ancient oak, while above a squirrel chittered at him. As he buttoned up his trousers, it was only a matter of reflex to check that the hilt of his sword was near his hand.

A twig snapped behind him, and his sword was no longer simply near his hand, but in his hand as he spun about to face –

Durine, a smile playing across his broad face, both hands up, palms out. ‘Stand easy, Pirojil,’ he said. ‘I guess I should have cleared my throat instead of stepping on a twig.’

Pirojil had to laugh. Snapped twigs as warnings of impending attack were a staple of late-night, campfire stories. For the most part, twigs bent and didn’t make any noise, except in the driest times of the year. Besides, in real life, an enemy was rarely considerate enough to give a warning before an assault: it kind of ruined the whole idea of a surprise attack.

Pirojil replaced his sword. They might be friends and longtime companions, but Durine’s hand never strayed far from the hilt of his own sword until Pirojil finished resheathing. Some habits were hard enough to break that they probably weren’t worth breaking.

‘Excuse me,’ Durine said, politely turning his back as he unbuttoned his own trousers.

A stream of piss steamed and smoked in the chilly air for an improbably long time.

‘With all the places to relieve yourself,’ Pirojil said, ‘did you really need me to be a witness?’

Durine buttoned his fly. ‘Well, truth be told, I always do prefer to have you or Kethol at my back when I’m occupied handling something this large and delicate, but no, I figured we ought to talk.’

‘So, talk.’

Durine shook his head. ‘I don’t like any of this. Playing bodyguard to an officer is one thing – you don’t have to worry about your own soldiers trying to knock him off –’

Pirojil’s eyebrows rose and he gave Durine a fish-eye.

‘All right, you usually don’t have to worry about your own soldiers trying to knock him off, just about enemy troops bothering him while he’s busy running a battle. I like doing bodyguard stuff.’ He patted his waist.

Pirojil nodded, though he did not meet the other’s gaze. It wasn’t that he was unwilling to. It was just a reflex for him, after all this time, with both Kethol and Durine: they automatically divided the world into fields of fire; it had saved their lives more than several times.

‘I know,’ Pirojil said. Bodyguard duty usually meant some extra coins, and the meals tended to be better, and while you were near enough the front not to get bored, you were also not so close that you had to worry about somebody leaping out at you while you were harvesting a bit of loot. ‘Not the sort of thing I would have volunteered for, but I don’t remember being asked to volunteer, do you?’

‘So why us?’

‘I don’t know, although I have some ideas. For whatever they’re worth.’ Pirojil shrugged. ‘I don’t think it’s because the Swordmaster thinks we’re better than his own troops.’

‘We are.’

Pirojil couldn’t help but grin. ‘Well, I think that, and you think that, and Kethol thinks that we’re better than they are – but I’m willing to bet that the locals don’t think we are.’

‘Their problem.’

‘No. Our problem. What we are is uninvolved, which is good.’

‘Good?’

‘Good for us. We’re not expected to take sides in local rivalries, which means that we can expect not to have our throats cut for making the wrong move at the wrong time.’

‘So you like this?’

‘I didn’t say that. The bad part is that we’re uninvolved –’

‘You said that was the good part.’ Sometimes Durine was just too slow. Not that Pirojil would complain; Kethol was worse.

‘It’s good and bad,’ Pirojil said slowly, patiently. ‘Most things are. The bad has two parts: someone might try to cut our throats for just being in the way.’

‘Nothing new in that.’

‘And we’re expendable.’

‘Nothing new in that, either.’

‘More so than usual.’

‘Ah!’ Durine nodded, finally understanding. ‘Politics.’ He said it as if it was a curse.

‘Politics.’ Pirojil nodded. ‘Look at it from the political angle. If Baron Morray, say, falls down a flight of stairs and breaks his neck, the Earl can either treat it as an accident, or as our fault. If it’s an accident, well then, there’s no political problem, and Luke Verheyen isn’t to blame – nobody is.’

And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

‘Sure. But if it’s not an accident – if, say, the Baron was murdered – then whose fault is it?’

‘The murderer’s?’

Pirojil wasn’t sure whether to groan or laugh. ‘Sure: the murderer. And who is the murderer? Verheyen, the hereditary enemy, who is eyeing the earldom every bit as much as Morray is? Or the three freebooters who, upon a careful search, will of a certainty seem to have too much money on them?’

‘So what do we do?’

‘The obvious: we try to keep Baron Morray from falling off his horse and breaking his neck while we’re on patrol, or falling down the stairs and breaking his neck when we’re at Morray and Mondegreen. We get him back to LaMut intact and breathing, and hope to be relieved of this duty there. If somebody tries to kill him, we stop them; if we can’t, we be sure to capture at least one assassin alive, and make sure he is able to tell who paid him, which won’t have been us.’

‘And if we can’t?’

Pirojil just frowned at him. That was obvious. ‘We kill everybody within reach, grab their horses and anything of value they have on them, and then we see if we can outrace the price on our heads.’

‘And what do you think are our chances of that?’

‘Sixty-sixty –’

‘Optimist.’

‘– on a good day.’ Pirojil arched an eyebrow. ‘If you have a better alternative, don’t sit on it – trot it out and let’s talk about it.’

Durine shook his head. ‘No. I’ve no better idea, and that’s a fact.’

‘Then we go with –’

‘Mount up,’ sounded from below. Tom Garnett’s voice carried well. ‘We’re wasting daylight.’

‘We’d better get down before they leave without us,’ Pirojil said.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Durine nodded, and his massive brow wrinkled. ‘But I see what you mean. Very clever of the Swordmaster, eh?’

‘Eh?’

‘I mean, if somebody does manage to kill Baron Morray out here, or if he does have a fatal accident, wouldn’t the Swordmaster know that we’d be blamed and would have to run for it?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘So he wins either way.’

Pirojil had to nod. The Swordmaster would win, either way, at that. A dead baron wasn’t an insuperable problem – the war had been almost as lethal for the nobility as it had been for the common soldier – but feuding barons getting the idea that assassination was acceptable was another thing altogether. Much better to blame the three freebooters, who had had no connection with any nobility faction. Someone would make it obvious they had just decided to kill and rob the Baron themselves – and whether Pirojil, Kethol and Durine were killed, captured, or escaped was immaterial; that’s what the official story would be.

Maybe Durine wasn’t really so stupid after all.

The Swordmaster surely wasn’t.

Shit.

They were only an hour south of Mondegreen when the Tsurani attacked.

There was no warning, at least none that Durine noticed, not even in retrospect. Neither Kethol nor Pirojil had any, or they would have given a signal.

One moment the company was riding, in two ragged columns, down a farming road, a frozen, fallow field of hay on each side, and the next moment, dozens of black-and-orange-armoured soldiers were swarming out of the ditch where they had lain, hidden beneath a layer of hay.

Durine spurred his horse into the soldier who, broadsword in his hands, was making for Morray. The horse ploughed into the Tsurani, knocking him down, while Durine leapt to the ground on the far side.

That was the trouble with being mounted. You were too dependent on the movements of the horse, and with anything but a superbly trained warhorse under you that was hopeless. Durine needed solid ground beneath his boots if he was going to stay and fight, and he was going to stay and fight.

He leapt back to avoid a wild swing from another Tsurani swordsman, then lunged forwards, kicking at his deceptively fragile-looking breastplate while hacking down at another opponent.

There were shouts and screams of pain all around him, but Baron Morray was still on his horse, and Durine slapped the flank of the mare with the flat of his blade, sending the animal galloping down the road with the Baron clinging desperately, towards where Kethol and Pirojil were still mounted.

It was always tempting to underrate the locals – a professional mercenary, if he lived, survived far more fighting than all but the most seasoned Eastern soldiers, and far more than Westerners – but Tom Garnett was no green captain, eager to fall into a Tsurani trap: he was already leading the front of the column out onto the field, attempting to outflank the attackers quickly, and not simply galloping into the secondary ambush that almost certainly waited for the company down the road.

Durine found himself awash in a sea of orange-trimmed black armour. He lashed out with feet, sword, and his free fist, hoping to clear enough space to make his own escape before he was drowned in Tsurani.

He more felt than saw or heard Pirojil at his back, and moments later, Pirojil was joined by half a dozen lancers, who had apparently circled around to strike at the Tsurani from the rear.

One horseman impaled a screaming Tsurani on his lance, lifting him up and off the ground for a moment, until his lance snapped with a loud crack. Flailing wildly with the broken haft of his lance, the Mut managed to club several of them away before one leapt upon him from behind and bore him down to the ground.

Durine would have tried to go to his aid, but he was busy with two of the Tsurani himself. He kicked one towards where Pirojil had dismounted – Pirojil had just dispatched his latest opponent, and could handle an off-balance soldier easily – then he ducked under the wild swing of another Tsurani’s two-handed black sword, and slashed in and up, into and through the smaller man’s throat.

Blood fountained, as though he had pulled the bung out of a hogshead of crimson wine.

The look in the eyes of a man you were killing was always the same. This can’t be happening to me, it said, in any language. Not me. Durine had often seen that expression on the face of a man who was facing the imminence of becoming a thing, and he didn’t need to see it again; he kicked the dying man away.

Three Tsurani hacked at the legs of a big grey horse, sending horse and rider tumbling to the ground as the animal screamed in that strange, high-pitched horsy shriek that you never could get used to. But one of them miscalculated: as the horse fell, it fell on the Tsurani, crushing him in his black armour with a sodden series of snapping sounds.

It was all Durine could do not to laugh.

The Tsurani were, as always, determined and capable warriors, but they were outnumbered, and lying for hours in ambush in the bitter cold had slowed them down: it was only a matter of a few minutes until most of them lay on the ground, dead and dying.

The screams were horrible to hear.

Durine half-squatted, panting for breath. No matter how long you had been doing this, it still always took something out of you.

One of the Tsurani on the ground near Durine was still shrieking loudly. A wound to his groin that still oozed fresh, steaming blood onto the frozen ground. Durine straightened himself and walked over, then hacked down, once, at the back of the Tsurani’s neck. The man twitched once, and was still, save for the flatulent sound as he fouled himself in his death.

Sudden death was rarely dignified.

‘Wait.’ Tom Garnett dismounted from his horse and braced Durine. ‘We take prisoners when we can. That man could have been one of the slaves that the Tsurani keep, and be of no danger to us at all.’

Durine didn’t answer.

‘Well, man, did you hear me?’

‘Excuse me.’ Pirojil stepped between them. ‘I think you might want to see something, Captain,’ he said, kneeling over the dead man and turning him on his back. The Tsurani’s head flopped loosely where it was still attached to the body.

Pirojil stood, toeing away a dagger from the Tsurani’s hand. He waved at the dead Tsurani and said, ‘Perhaps, Captain, you would not have wanted to have your last thought to be that your mercy had been misplaced.’

Durine hadn’t seen any dagger, and it wouldn’t have mattered. The Tsurani was dying, anyway, and it hardly made any difference whether he went on his way now, or in a few minutes. At least this way his screams wouldn’t aggravate Durine’s headache.

They would be bad enough to face in his dreams.

The regulars had two sullen Tsurani prisoners, their hands tightly bound and then leashed by the neck, under the care of a pair of lancers, although that was hardly necessary, as they weren’t struggling. Captured Tsurani were either utterly intractable, and you eventually had to kill them, no matter how many times you beat them bloody, or how well you treated them while they were chained heavily enough to control them – or utterly tame. One of the locals had tried to explain to Durine that this was something to do with Tsurani honour: if captured, they assumed the gods cursed them or some nonsense like that; but Durine knew that once they gave up, they seemed resigned to spend the rest of their lives as slaves. Durine didn’t understand, and he didn’t particularly want to; where to put a sword in one was about all he needed to know. Though he did recall one of the Muts telling him the black-and-orange ones were called Minwanabi, and they were a particularly tough and evil bunch of bastards. Durine shrugged and walked away. He didn’t plan on staying in the north long enough to discover what the other tribes were named or how evil they were. All Tsurani seemed tough enough.

The two tame ones were the only survivors among the Tsurani, though. Easily two dozen of the enemy lay dead on the ground, accompanied in death by four Muts and two horses. One soldier wept as he knelt over his horse, feeling at its neck to be sure that its heart had stopped beating.

Silly man. Getting so attached to something made of meat. Meat died and spoiled.

Lady Mondegreen and Baron Morray sat on their horses, overlooking the scene. Baron Morray’s handsome face was impassive, if a little pale, but the lady’s complexion was almost green, and she was distracted enough to wipe a trickle of vomit from the corner of her mouth with her sleeve instead of her handkerchief.

‘I’ve … I’ve never seen a battle before,’ she said, quietly.

‘Battie?’ Baron Morray shook his head. ‘This was barely a skirmish.’

‘What are they going to do with them?’ she asked.

‘Leave it to the landholder,’ he said. ‘It will be his responsibility.’

Durine nodded. Just as well it wasn’t Durine’s job to break the frozen soil and bury the bodies; that would be long and hard work, but it was somebody else’s problem – disposing of the corpses would be for the local landholder or franklins to do, depending on whose field this was. The Mut soldiers would be wrapped in blankets and carried along to be given a proper cremation at Mondegreen. The Tsurani would probably end up fertilizing the fields.

It was all dirty work, certainly, but if the locals got to the scene quickly enough – and they would – there would be a couple of hundredweight of fresh horsemeat as payment for their work. An ignominious thing, perhaps, for a trusty mount to end up in a peasant stew, but that was the way of it.

Tom Garnett remounted his horse. ‘I’ve got half the company chasing after the archers who lay in ambush, and I’m going to have to take the rest out after those who ran away here. We’ve got to run these dastards to ground before dark, or they’ll be breaking into cottages and killing bondsmen. They’re no military threat, not now, but …’

Durine nodded. ‘But you still don’t want them killing your people.’

That was the problem when dealing with an enemy so far behind his own lines. Retreat wasn’t a practical option.

Durine didn’t know much about what was and wasn’t a military threat, but a scared man with a black blade almost as long as he was tall was the sort of thing he wouldn’t have wanted to encounter unawares.

It apparently took Kethol a moment before he realized that the Captain had been talking to him.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said at last.

Tom Garnett indicated the two nobles and their coteries, huddling together further down the road. ‘You three and a squad under Sergeant Henders will bring the civilians on to Mondegreen, and the rest of us shall meet you there.’

Kethol made a sketchy salute with his blade.