The Poisoned Quarrel: The Arbalester Trilogy 3 (Complete Edition)

by Duncan Lay

  Wounded horses shrieked in every direction, the noise even more distressing than the cries of dying men.

  A bellowing cavalryman swung at Fallon’s head but he ducked under the lance, then shoved the man, where he slipped on the ice and went over, easy prey for hungry men with thirsty spears. A howling recruit stabbed down so furiously that his spearhead sank into the ice and pinned the dying man there. Another guardsman lunged and Fallon literally slipped sideways, then came up against a dead man and used him as footing to smash his sword around in a massive blow. It struck the side of the cavalryman’s head and took it off, leaving an almost headless corpse standing there, one jawbone still attached to the ragged stump of neck.

  Fallon looked around but there were no more cavalry near him. Dozens were streaming away into the falling snow, dropping swords and melting into the cold murk, although the slingers were still picking them off. He leaned on his sword, digging the tip into the ice to keep him upright, fighting for breath after the furious exertion, clouds of steam pouring off him.

  He let out a cry of triumph, a wordless release of everything that had been bottled up these past moons and heard it echoed by his men. Devlin patted him on the shoulder, wiping blood from his face and Fallon searched around for a clean patch of snow—something to cool his dry mouth—but could not see any.

  The last few cavalry were begging for surrender, dropping swords and holding out their empty hands.

  “What do we do with them, sir?” Bran asked, the bearded officer looking as if he had bathed in horse’s blood.

  Fallon glanced at the cluster of surrendering men.

  “Herd them out onto the ice and leave them there. We need to get our own horses and every man who is fit to hold a sword,” he said raggedly.

  “But I thought that was all of them?” Bran asked, looking over his shoulder into the swirling snow.

  “It is. But we haven’t got Swane, nor that bitch of a Duchess. We can’t rest until we have them. I won’t be happy until I see them both dangling from the end of a rope.”

  *

  “Can you see anything?” Swane asked angrily.

  Dina did not reply. It was pointless. They had ridden carefully after the final line of cavalry and could hear the sounds of battle not far ahead but could see nothing through the swirling clouds of snow. It was frustrating to wait here, unable to tell what was happening, and doubly frustrating to hear Swane worrying. His father would never have let his guard down like that, she reflected, but perhaps that was all to the good. After all, it made Swane easier to manipulate and, eventually, replace.

  The screams and shouts and the ringing of steel on steel echoed eerily through the shifting clouds of snow. Worst of all was the crying of the horses. Sometimes they caught a glimpse of figures but then the snow swirled and it vanished as quickly as it had come. Dina concentrated on staying warm. Her fur cloak was thick with snow and her toes and fingers were fast losing feeling. She edged her horse away from the body of a mercenary who lay nearby. A stone was embedded in his forehead, and snow had settled over his eyes and open mouth, giving him an eerie appearance. At least he hadn’t started to smell but it was disquieting to look at. She eased her horse forward until he was out of her sight and had almost drifted into a doze, lulled by the sapping cold, when a roar jerked her awake.

  “What was that?” Swane gasped.

  It went on and on, a dreadful, triumphant howl, and Dina shivered violently.

  “Is that our men?” she asked, unable to stop herself. Obviously none could answer her and she turned to where Kane sat with a score of guards, all that had not charged into the snow. “Send three men to see what is happening.”

  But then shapes began to emerge from the gloom, men in bright surcoats slipping and sliding and running, looking back over their shoulders and crying with fear. At first there were a few, then dozens of them, going in all directions, heedless of the falling snow, of the waiting Swane and Dina, of everything but the need to get away.

  “Where are they going? What are they doing?” Swane demanded angrily. “Stop them!”

  Kane spurred his horse forwards and caught one of them, a tall man in a tattered blue surcoat of Rork.

  “What happened? Tell your King!” he demanded, hauling the man in front of them.

  The man gasped for breath. “We thought we had them but they were standing on the ice, not on the ground. Our horses fell and they tore us apart. We’re all dead and now they’re coming for the rest of us!” he panted. “We must run!”

  “No!” Swane cried. Kicking his horse into motion, he fumbled his sword out and lashed down, the blade tearing out the Rorkman’s eyes as Kane hurriedly let go of the man’s shoulder. “How dare you lie to your King!”

  The man fell to his knees, weeping blood, and Swane slashed down again and again, until the Rorkman finally collapsed, kicking weakly.

  “No!” Swane shouted, his eyes wild. “I cannot have lost!”

  Dina looked over his shoulder, to where more of their army was disappearing into the drifts of snow. A couple of figures were limping away from the battlefield still, struggling men holding themselves upright against the pain of their wounds but nothing else. There was still the eerie screaming of wounded horses but no more ringing of clashing weapons, which was even more alarming than the earlier scream of triumph. The Rorkman had obviously been speaking the truth.

  “This is not true! I shall ride forwards and kill Fallon myself! Without him, his pack of traitorous dogs will surrender!” Swane declaimed, holding his bloody sword aloft.

  Dina nudged her horse forwards until she was by his side, then her hand flicked out and slapped him across the face.

  Stunned, he dropped his sword and turned to face her.

  “How dare—” he began.

  “Listen to me now or we are all dead,” she said, her voice colder than the air. “Our men have been killed and Fallon will be coming for us soon. We must get away or we shall end up like your father. Murdered in front of a mocking crowd.”

  “Run? We can’t run!”

  Dina was saved from replying by a shout from the battlefield. “Find Swane!” someone roared. It was the unmistakable voice of Fallon.

  “Come,” she said, a little more gently. “He will not find us in this snow. We can still get away.”

  Swane looked like a whipped dog. His mouth hung open and his lip trembled. “But how will I get my throne back now?” he whimpered.

  She gestured to Kane and the guards began to move, their faces almost whiter than the snow. ‘We shall bring along Finbar and any other of the wizards who still live. And we have Prince Kemal as well.”

  “What good is any of that going to do? I might as well die here,” Swane cried, snatching his arm free of her grip.

  For a moment she thought about killing him. But she quashed the temptation. The nobles would not follow her. She needed him as a puppet for the throne and, more importantly, he was the one who knew how to use Zorva’s power. She took a deep breath. “And I have the book from your room, the one left by Brother Nahuatl.”

  Swane’s face changed instantly, transformed by a terrible lust, and he followed her swiftly into the shifting mists of snow.

  CHAPTER 26

  “It’s no good,” Devlin shouted in Fallon’s ear. “We can’t see anything and the wind’s getting worse. Night has almost fallen and we have to get these men out of this snow before we lose them. The sweat from the battle will turn into ice and then they’ll die.”

  Fallon swore furiously, his curses lost in the swirling snow. They had searched for the best part of two turns of the hourglass and found no trace of Swane or Dina. They had rounded up a few score wounded guardsmen but that was it. The snow had wiped out any hint of a trail. It was a bitter disappointment at the end of a triumph. There was always the chance that Swane and Dina would freeze to death in this weather and that was a thought to warm the heart. But until he saw the bodies and cut off Swane’s head, Gaelland was not entirely safe
.

  “Right, let’s get everyone into the village of Dunclady. At least they can cook a hot meal and stay out of this weather. When it blows itself out we’ll look again for them.”

  But that was easier said than done. While their losses had been light compared to the battle of Berry, there were plenty of wounded and they had to be carried into the deserted village, which was littered with the mess left by Swane’s army.

  As for Swane’s wounded guardsmen and mercenaries, as well as the ones who had run off into the snow, Fallon could not spare any men to take care of them. Nor, truthfully, did he worry much about them. They had wanted to kill his family and his men and if they froze to death out there then so be it. He had not forgotten the columns of smoke that marked where farmers and their families had died during Swane’s advance.

  He pasted a smile over his black mood as he visited his own wounded, resting in the deserted homes. Raging fires kept the cold at bay and stew bubbled over those fires. Barely two score of men had been killed in the battle and, while more than a hundred had been wounded, only a handful would not recover and take their places in the ranks again. They cheered him until he left them and joined his friends in a smaller house.

  “Now this is more like it,” Brendan said. “A neat little house, a raging fire, hot stew and a bed for the night. Almost like home.”

  “Well, if you go looking for Nola during the night, make sure you don’t come near my blanket,” Devlin told him with a grin.

  Brendan’s face darkened and Padraig hastily stepped in. “This is not a night to be out in the cold. I’d wager not a one of Swane’s men out in this storm will last till morning. And we’ll probably find Swane, frozen stiff, in a day or two.”

  “Brendan’s frozen stiff, which is why I don’t want to sleep next to him tonight,” Devlin added.

  “That’s enough,” Fallon said warningly, as Brendan scowled into his bowl of stew.

  “Come on!” Devlin protested. “We should be celebrating! For Aroaril’s sake, we beat Swane and united the country. It’s all ours now and we can make it secure by spring, ready to turn back the Kottermanis. Our troubles are over!”

  Fallon snorted. “Not exactly over,” he said. “We have to find Swane and Dina, and we have to find Kemal, alive.”

  “We just need to trust in Aroaril,” Gallagher said complacently. “Thanks to Him, we have our families back, and we have turned back both Kemal’s attack and Swane’s. Tomorrow we shall find them and all will be complete.” He put a hand on Fallon’s shoulder. “It is clear that you are destined to rule Gaelland. Our long journey has led us to this point. Happiness is within our grasp. We just have to have a little faith and all will be well.”

  There was the usual awkward silence that followed Gallagher’s pronouncements about Aroaril. Fallon had noticed how Rosaleen was even looking uncomfortable with some of her husband’s words, not that she was saying anything in public. And if she was saying anything in private, it was not doing any good. Still, Fallon did like the sound of Gallagher’s last words. They were close to complete victory, for surely Swane and Dina could not escape the snow. He could go back to Berry and start remaking the country, just the way Prince Cavan imagined it, so it could be a place where Kerrin and the new baby could grow up free, and safe. Maybe Gallagher was right. Maybe he was blessed by Aroaril. God knows he had surely earned it. He became aware of the silence and thought it best to break it.

  “I thank you all for your help. I could not have done this without you,” he said.

  “Well, here’s to finding something to properly toast us with soon,” Padraig added, raising his water.

  “Show me Swane’s body tomorrow and I will buy you whatever you like.” Fallon grinned. The King’s words had proved to be nothing but the last gasp of evil from a sick man. Everything would work out.

  *

  Kemal thought the previous night spent locked in a beast shed, with only old sacking for blankets, had been bad enough. But it seemed like paradise compared to tonight. He had been unceremoniously dragged out of the shed and hurled into the back of a wagon. At first he thought he had been thrown in with a bunch of dead bodies but he swiftly realized they were instead sleeping, although some of them looked close to death.

  The wind was howling and the snow was settling on all of them but, with these strangely dressed men obviously uncomplaining, he wriggled down into the middle of them, using his feet and teeth to draw their cloaks over the top of him to both give some shelter and use their fading body heat to warm himself. He could not hear what the riders were saying but, from their demeanor and lack of numbers, it seemed obvious that they had been defeated by Fallon. They were worried about what would happen if Fallon found them. And that was something that also worried Kemal. With Swane running for his life, having a Crown Prince of Kotterman as a hostage was seemingly a luxury not worth having. Talk of sacrifice to Zorva seemed like it was back on the agenda.

  But nothing happened while they escorted the wagon into the growing gloom. He assumed they must have a destination in mind but, as night fell and they were no closer to stopping, he wondered what was happening. After all, there was almost no chance of seeing anything in the remaining light and surely, if they kept going, they would all freeze to death out here.

  *

  Dina hated every moment of the ride but she had been through far worse things in her youth and, when the alternative was being executed by Fallon, it was easy to keep going. They had tried to retrace their old trail, the one they had left from the Spine down to Lake Caragh but, swiftly, it vanished under a layer of snow. There were abandoned farmhouses along this way somewhere and all she could do was hope they found one.

  It seemed a fool’s hope in this weather but she had no other.

  As she rode, she was thinking furiously, partly to stave off the cold that threatened to destroy them all but also because Swane was going to take even more careful handling. Helping him discover how to use the Dark God’s power might save them but what would it mean for her? Once he had all the power, then he would not need her. There was no way she would let herself be discarded or, worse, end up sacrificed to Zorva. Not after what she had already done to win him over. No, she was going to have to be his high priestess. As far as she knew, Zorva didn’t have priestesses, but she was sure she could persuade any man, even a god.

  But first they had to survive this night.

  There was no sign of any shelter and the chance of seeing a house in this weather was remote anyway. They could ride past one just twenty yards away and they would not notice it. Just when she was beginning to fear they would die out here, shapes loomed out of the gloom and a small copse of fir trees appeared. The bedraggled party made for them and, once under the evergreen canopy, things seemed a little calmer and warmer.

  “Find Finbar. See if he can do anything,” Dina shouted into Kane’s ear. The officer nodded, the snow on his helmet cascading off as he did so.

  The exhausted wizard was found among his half-dead companions and, although he protested at first, he was able to get the trees’ branches to knit together, forming a crude shelter and wind break for them. Tired guards swept away the snow, creating a fire pit. With his last gasp of energy, Finbar sparked alight soggy fallen pine needles, giving them a chance to build a fire.

  The few scraps of food they had scrounged from Swane’s supplies were thrown into a pot with handfuls of snow and topped up with generous amounts of horse blood from the tired mounts. Dina took a cupful of this strange mixture and almost choked at the foul taste but it was warm and she could feel her body waking up as nourishment eased through her. Guards hacked off branches and soon they had a fire raging, filling the little magic-made clearing with warmth. Gusts of snow still penetrated but she looked around and decided they would survive. She took another cup of the horse blood soup over to where Swane sat hunched against a wheel of the wagon.

  “You need to drink, sire,” she said, pressing it into his cold hands.

&n
bsp; “What is the point? Everything is lost. That bastard Fallon has won. We might survive the night but they will find us in the morning. There is no way we can escape. It has all ended.”

  She sat down next to him. “No, sire,” she said. She unwrapped the book Munro had taken from Swane’s room. She stroked the cover. “Look, it is just beginning.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Feray was so proud of her sons. They showed their uncle nothing as the little group walked through the streets. It seemed that time in Gaelland, when they had been Fallon’s prisoners, had proved useful. Naturally she would not give Durzu the satisfaction of knowing how worried she was. It would not be safe to sail for Gaelland for at least three more moons, so for the Emperor to be here already, disrupting the Empire by moving the court all the way to Adana, showed how much he wanted Gaelland. Yonetici desperately needed to have the scrolls record he was the first Emperor to add a new province to the Empire in living memory. They had passed workers creating huge new statues honoring this achievement, before it had even happened. Feray feared this obsession would make her mission nearly impossible.

  They were taken to one of Aroaril’s churches, the biggest one in the city. Its huge dome was truly beautiful, while from its tall spires the clergy called the faithful to prayer three times a day.

  No more. Its clergy had been moved out, the congregations shifted to other churches and instead it was ringed with guards and surrounded by petitioners from all over the Empire, come here to beg for trading rights and favors, or to protest decisions made by the local governors. In between those two groups scurried an army of scribes, the real lifeblood that kept the Empire’s heart beating. Another army of messengers waited by their horses, being replaced by fresh arrivals as fast as they were sent out. She knew this was a chain that went right around the Empire; messages could be sent like lightning across the disparate countries that made up the Kotterman Empire, handed on from one messenger station to the next. Was this how word had reached the Emperor’s ears so swiftly?