by David Weber
The fact that Halbrook Hollow had used the schooner Sunrise for his transport from Kairee’s hunting lodge in the neighboring Earldom of Styvyn to Trekair Bay was another of the very few positive elements in the duke’s incredibly stupid decision to travel outside Tellesberg at this particular moment. Sunrise was one of Kairee’s vessels, and she’d been used to make several Temple Loyalist deliveries in and around Howell Bay. Her crew had already demonstrated both its loyalty and its ability to keep its collective mouth shut.
None of which changed the fact that Halbrook Hollow had been supposed to be staying in Tellesberg Palace where he’d have a cast-iron alibi when news of the attack on Saint Agtha’s arrived. And, of course, there was the minor fact that Sunrise had now sailed into Trekair Bay right by a galleon of the Imperial Charisian Navy. Which, given what was about to happen at Saint Agtha’s, meant she was bound to come under intense scrutiny eventually, and that raised all sorts of unpleasant possibilities of its own.
“Your Grace,” the bishop said after a moment, “I understand why you might feel anxious, but in my opinion, this was still an ill-advised decision on your part. Too many things have the potential to go wrong.”
“Which is precisely why I’m here.” The duke’s mouth twisted in a parody of a smile. “I know how high feelings are running among our people. I want to be here to be sure they behave themselves with . . . proper restraint. Sharleyan never needs to know I was here, but I need to know that she’s all right.”
“I see.”
Halcom nodded slowly, then seated himself once again at the kitchen table, facing the door. He waved one hand at the second chair, across the table from his own, and Halbrook Hollow sat down. Then the bishop glanced over his visitor’s shoulder at Shumay.
“Ahlvyn, in light of His Grace’s concerns, could you ask Mytrahn to step in here? Go ahead and tell him the Duke is here and—” He paused and looked at Halbrook Hollow. “I assume you brought at least one or two of your own armsmen, Your Grace?”
“Two of them.” Halbrook Hollow nodded. “Don’t worry. Both of them have been with me for at least twenty years.”
“Good.” Halcom turned back to Shumay. “Tell Mytrahn to see to any of His Grace’s armsmen’s needs, as well.”
“Of course, My Lord,” Shumay murmured, his face expressionless, and stepped out of the kitchen.
“Your Grace,” Halcom continued as the young priest withdrew, “as I say, I understand the basis for your anxiety. And I suppose I can’t fault you for your desire to ensure your niece’s safety. Still, it would have been better if you’d been able to trust me to see to that while you remained in Tellesberg. All of our plans and strategy were built upon your being there, in the Palace, when news of this arrived.”
“I realize that,” Halbrook Hollow said just a bit shortly. “The original plan was mine, after all. But Traivyr is prepared to cover for me, and the fact that I’m already ‘right next door’ in Styvyn will get me to the scene much more rapidly. The fact that I’m already here before Gray Harbor or anyone else from Tellesberg can arrive will give me the opportunity to establish contact with Sharleyan’s abductors before they do, too. It’ll be much harder for them to try to ease me aside if I’m already conducting negotiations before they ever get here.”
Halcom nodded slowly, although he recognized the sound of someone rationalizing a decision he’d actually made for quite different reasons. As rationalizations went, though, the bishop was forced to admit, it wasn’t bad. Halbrook Hollow’s plan for Sharleyan’s abduction by Charisian elements hostile to the merger of Charis and Chisholm had been designed to deal Chisholm’s faith in Charis a mortal blow. If the Charisians couldn’t even bother themselves to adequately protect Chisholm’s queen from their own lunatic fringe, the backlash in Chisholm would almost certainly be severe. Not only that, it would be most severe among Chisholm’s commoners, the ones most likely to resist any machinations among the kingdom’s aristocracy.
Halbrook Hollow’s freely expressed reservations about the wisdom of her marriage, on the other hand, would be amply vindicated, and as the senior Chisholmian noble in Charis, not to mention his status as Sharleyan’s uncle and the man who still officially commanded the Royal Army, he would inevitably be deeply involved in any negotiations with her captors. Even if someone like Gray Harbor might be tempted to exclude him, they would realize that the political consequences in Chisholm would be disastrous.
The demands of those captors would be extreme, but not impossibly so for someone determined to get his beloved niece back alive. The duke would agree in Sharleyan’s name to withdraw Chisholmian support for the schism between the Temple and the Church of Charis, but only if she was returned to him alive. If his Charisian fellow negotiators objected, he would point out that Sharleyan could always countermand his own agreement later, but that for her to do that, they first had to get her back.
Once the critical point had been conceded, the “abductors” would agree to return Sharleyan to Halbrook Hollow’s custody . . . but not in Charis. She would be delivered in Chisholm, which would naturally require Halbrook Hollow to return to Cherayth in person. And Halbrook Hollow would arrive sufficiently in advance of her return to engineer the downfall of Baron Green Mountain and Queen Mother Alahnah’s regency, which would inevitably have been weakened by the proof of just how unwise the alliance with Charis had actually been in the first place. He’d have to be careful about exactly how he managed that, but given command of the army, it shouldn’t prove impossibly difficult. Especially not when he accepted his old friend Green Mountain’s resignation as first councilor with obvious sorrow and regret and solely because it was part of the abductors’ demands.
Halbrook Hollow had no doubt that with Green Mountain out of the way, the more conservative—and ambitious—of Sharleyan’s nobles would be prepared to reach a quiet, unspoken understanding with him, despite any past animosity. By the time Sharleyan herself arrived in Chisholm, he and his newfound allies would be firmly in control, at which point Sharleyan would find herself comfortably but securely—and very discreetly—under house arrest while Halbrook Hollow put “her” new policies into effect.
Unfortunately, as Halcom had pointed out to Shumay, the plan would never work—not in the long run. Which was why he had contrived his own, quite different strategy. And irritated as the bishop had been by Halbrook Hollow’s unexpected arrival, more mature consideration showed him the hand of God behind the duke’s foolish decision. After all, his response to what they actually intended had always been problematical, at best, whereas now . . .
“I see your reasoning, Your Grace,” Halcom said in a slightly regretful tone as Mytrahn Daivys, one of the Temple Loyalists’ group leaders, stepped through the kitchen door behind the seated Halbrook Hollow. “And, under the circumstances, it may not be an entirely bad thing you decided to come.”
“I’m glad you can see it my way,” Halbrook Hollow said. “Now, it’s important, as I say, that Sharleyan never realize I was here. So—”
His voice died in a hideous gurgle as Daivys seized his hair, yanked his head back, and slashed his throat.
Halcom pushed back from the table with a grimace of distaste as the flood of blood splashed across it. Some of the spray pattern pattered across his own tunic, and his grimace deepened. He dabbed at it instinctively, but his gaze never left Halbrook Hollow’s face as the duke’s eyes flared wide in horrified surprise, and then lost all expression forever.
“I’m sorry, Your Grace,” Halcom said softly, reaching across the table to close the dead man’s eyes. “But it truly is best this way, I think.”
He drew a deep breath, suppressing an urge to gag as the coppery stink of blood and the stench of voided bowels filled the kitchen, and looked at Daivys.
“I’m sorry we had to do that, Mytrahn. He may have been a foolish man, and we all know he had personal political ambitions, as well. But he was also a son of Mother Church.”
Daivys nodded, wiping his dag
ger clean on the duke’s tunic, then cocked an eyebrow.
“What should we do with the body, My Lord?” he asked pragmatically.
“We’re going to have to give that some thought,” Halcom admitted. “I’m inclined to the theory that it might be best for him to simply disappear—perhaps another victim of the Charisian assassins. That will depend on how effectively Master Kairee has managed to cover himself and exactly what the Duke told people in Tellesberg he intended to do. For now, put him with his armsmen.”
. XIV .
The Convent of Saint Agtha,
Earldom of Crest Hollow,
Kingdom of Charis
The marksman who’d killed Wyllys Gairaht stayed very still.
The opportunity to pick off the commander of Sharleyan’s bodyguards had been an unanticipated gift from God, and he’d taken it without any order to do so. The captain would have had to die in the end, anyway, of course—there could be no survivors of this night’s work—but the possibility that he might have cried out, or that one of his own men might have seen him fall, had been very real. On the other hand, the range had been less than forty yards, and the marksman hadn’t missed a shot at that range since he was a boy. The odds had favored a silent kill, in his judgment, and the elimination of the bodyguards’ central authority had struck him as well worth the risk.
He listened intently and heard nothing but the grumble of more thunder from the west and the sound of pre-storm wind, sighing through the trees about him.
Good, he thought, and carefully and quietly re-spanned the arbalest.
Edwyrd Seahamper glanced up at the sky with a frown as full darkness settled over Saint Agtha’s. The convent’s grounds were dimly illuminated by the candlelight spilling out of various windows, and the convent chapel’s stained-glass glowed warmly. The windows’ patterns were simple, as became a convent dedicated to a saint who’d embraced a life of asceticism and vows of poverty and service, but the colors were richly vibrant.
And they won’t do a thing for my nightvision, he thought grumpily.
There was just enough light to make the shadows even more impenetrable, and that was going to grow still worse, unless he missed his guess, once the rain began to fall in earnest.
Of course, I’ll be able to see just fine during the lightning flashes.
His frown turned into a grimace at that particular thought. Contemplating the effect rain was going to have on little things like mail hauberks, cuirasses, sword blades, pistols, rifle barrels and bayonets, and anything else made of steel didn’t make him feel significantly better, somehow. Still, he’d been rained on before, and he’d never shrunk yet.
He shrugged that concern aside and returned to the thought which had occasioned his frown in the first place.
Captain Gairaht should have been back half an hour ago. The captain was an energetic man who was disinclined to waste time. By now, he’d had time to hike clear round the convent twice, but there was no sign of him.
He probably found someone he thought needed a little . . . counseling, Seahamper thought. God help anyone he thinks is slacking off on this detail! On the other hand, who’d be stupid enough to do that in the first place?
His frown returned, deeper than before, and he glanced at Sergeant Tyrnyr. Tyrnyr, another Chisholmian, had been with the empress for the last eight years, which had made him the logical man to share Seahamper’s watch here at the guesthouse door.
“I wonder what’s keeping the Captain?” Seahamper wondered out loud.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Tyrnyr replied.
“It’s probably nothing, but it’s not like him,” Seahamper continued. “Trot over to the main gate, Bryndyn. See if he’s over there.”
“If he isn’t?”
“Then make a circuit yourself. No, wait. If they haven’t seen him, ask the Lieutenant to send one of the others around the circuit looking for him while you come back here.”
“Got it,” Tyrnyr acknowledged laconically, and went jogging off across the convent’s manicured grass.
The man crouched in the meadow just beyond the orchard came slowly upright once full darkness had fallen. Nailys Lahrak’s face had been blackened, and his dark clothing blended seamlessly into the night about him. No one could possibly have seen him from more than a very few yards away. In fact, Lahrak himself couldn’t see the other men out here under his command. Not that he was worried about them; he didn’t have to see them to know where they were, given how often they’d rehearsed this particular task.
There’d been no way to predict with certainty where the empress’ bodyguards would bivouac, but Lahrak was an experienced hunter and woodsman who’d grown up less than four miles from Saint Agtha’s, and he was intimately familiar with the convent’s grounds. He’d known it would be impossible for the abbess to house them inside the convent proper, and this had been by far the most logical place for them to pitch their tents outside its wall. There’d been two other possibilities, and they’d rehearsed attacks on those locations, as well, yet he’d been confident in his own mind that this would be the one that actually got carried out.
Now he took a small object from his pocket and raised it to his lips. A moment later, the plaintive, whistling call of a gray-horned wyvern floated through the night. The nocturnal hunter called three times, and somewhere in the windy darkness, another gray-horn replied.
Captain Gairaht had posted sentries around his bivouac area, as well as around the convent itself, and those sentries hadn’t been chosen for their lack of vigilance. They stood their posts alertly, yet they would have been more than human if they’d actually expected an attack. Especially an attack on their own encampment, rather than a direct strike at the empress. Their planning and training included the notion that the first move in an attack might be to neutralize their reserve force, but few of them had truly anticipated that level of sophistication or planning out of the sort of lunatics likely to launch a direct assault on Sharleyan or Cayleb.
Unfortunately, they weren’t dealing with lunatics . . . only fanatics.
The sentries scanned the night around them attentively, yet they saw nothing. The men creeping steadily towards them through the darkness were effectively invisible, but they’d carefully located their own targets before darkness fell. They knew exactly where to find the sentries, and the guardsmen were backlit, however faintly, by their fellows’ cooking fires.
For some minutes after the night-hunting wyverns had called to one another, nothing else happened. Then, abruptly, quite a lot of things happened almost simultaneously.
The sudden whip-crack of a firing rifle split the night.
The sentry who’d seen his attacker at the last moment not only managed to get off his shot but hit the other man squarely in the chest. Unfortunately, the accuracy of his single shot didn’t do a thing to the other two Temple Loyalists detailed to neutralize his position.
“Post Three! Post Thr—!” he shouted, identifying his post, but before he could complete the announcement, the other two were upon him. His rifle blocked the slash of the first man’s sword, and a quick, savage riposte with the rifle butt knocked the attacker back on his heels, winning him just enough time to thrust with his bayonet at the other man. The second Temple Loyalist tried to twist aside, but he couldn’t completely avoid the bayonet, and he groaned in anguish as the bitter steel slammed between his ribs.
He went down, yet even as the guardsman started to recover his bayonet, the swordsman whose first attack he’d deflected drove two feet of steel through his own throat.
None of the other sentries even saw their attackers. Two of them were turning towards the blinding muzzle flash of the first guardsman’s rifle when their own assailants flowed over them; the other six were already too busy dying to even register that single shot.
Shouts of alarm came from the bivouac area, and someone began barking harsh-voiced orders as armsmen scrambled out of their tents, dropped eating utensils, sprang to their feet, and sn
atched for weapons. The men of the Imperial Guard responded quickly, almost instantly, with the discipline of unceasing training and hard-won experience. Yet for all the quickness with which they reacted, they were too slow. They were still scrambling for their mental balance, fighting past the stunned shock of complete surprise, when twice their own number of armed, disciplined assailants swarmed into their encampment.
Only a handful of the off-duty guardsmen were armored, and all of them were scattered about the bivouac area, where they’d been engaged in the routine, homey tasks of tending to their equipment, finishing their suppers, and preparing to get some rest before it was their turn to take over the duty watch. The Temple Loyalists were concentrated, moving in purposeful teams, and they went through the camp like a hurricane.
Men cursed, grunted, and cried out as weapons struck, and those of the guardsmen who’d managed to grab their own weapons fought back desperately. Men screamed as steel bit deep, or as the rifle butts of guardsmen who hadn’t had time to load crushed flesh and bone. The night was hideous with the sounds of men slaughtering one another, and then, as abruptly as it had begun, it was over.
The meadow was littered with bodies, most of them in the livery of the Empire of Charis. Thirty-five of Sharleyan’s bodyguards had been brutally eliminated at the cost of four dead and six wounded Temple Loyalists.
“Langhorne!”
