Weavers of War: Book Five of Winds of the Forelands

by DAVID B. COE

  The soldier came at him a second time, weapon raised, shield held ready. A simple attack—no feint. As if sparring with probationers in the Curgh wards, Tavis stepped around the assault, allowing the man’s blade to glance off his shield, and slashed at the man’s gut. As with the last Braedony soldier, this man’s mail coat saved his life, but only for the moment. The blow staggered him, and before he could recover Tavis thrust his sword through the soldier’s throat.

  Without hesitating, the young lord sprang toward Xaver’s other attacker. But seeing how his friend died, this soldier retreated.

  “Thanks,” Xaver said, sounding winded and slightly awed. “What are you doing here, I mean other than saving my life?”

  “I need Fotir.”

  There was a chiming sound, which Tavis recognized as the splintering of a blade, and then the harsh cry of a dying man.

  “Did I hear you say that you needed me, my lord?”

  “Yes. You’ve seen the Solkarans?”

  The first minister nodded, glancing southward. “The duke ordered his archers to the rear to hold them off.”

  “That might help, but Grinsa was hoping you and he might join that fight as well.”

  The man’s bright eyes widened, owllike and eager. “Are you certain?”

  “What can they do?” Xaver asked, brow creasing.

  “Right away, First Minister. There isn’t much time. He’s at the rear of the king’s line.”

  “Yes, my lord. The duke—”

  “I’ll explain it to him as best I can.”

  “I think you’d be better off telling him nothing, my lord. I’ll think of something later.”

  Tavis nodded and watched as the minister ran off toward where Grinsa and Keziah awaited him.

  “What’s going on, Tavis?”

  “It’s best you don’t know, Stinger.”

  “Why? Because I haven’t been through all that you have? Because I’ve just been in Curgh all this time, while you’ve been traveling the length and breadth of the Forelands?”

  He faced his friend, who, despite his cuts and bruises, looked terribly young. “Grinsa is a Weaver, Xaver,” he said wearily. What did it matter anymore? With that army approaching, all was lost. “Do you know what that means?”

  Xaver’s face paled, his green eyes widening much as had Fotir’s a few moments before. “A Weaver?”

  “Yes.”

  “The conspiracy…” He stopped, shaking his head.

  “Grinsa has saved my life more times than I care to count. He’s no traitor. In fact, I believe he’s the only person in the Forelands who can defeat the Weaver who leads the renegades.”

  “Then why not tell your father?”

  “Because he’s not ready to understand all of this. He’ll hear the word ‘Weaver’ and nothing else.” He looked southward again, marking the progress of Solkara’s army. “Until the nobles in this land see for themselves what this other Weaver can do, they won’t be willing to put their trust in Grinsa.”

  “Does Kearney know?”

  “Yes. As I understand it, he’d pretty much figured it out for himself. Grinsa had no choice but to admit it.”

  “A Weaver,” Xaver said again, as if the word were new to him. “I suppose I should be pleased. Having one on our side evens matters a bit, doesn’t it?”

  Tavis looked to the south again. “It might. He’s still our only chance of defeating the Weaver. I hope he doesn’t get himself killed.”

  “Should we go after him now?”

  Tavis shook his head. “Fotir and the archminister are with him. They won’t let anything happen to him.”

  “Wait a moment. How does Fotir know? Surely if your father—”

  “You remember how I escaped from Kentigern?”

  “The hole in the castle wall!” the liege man said, breathless, a look of wonder on his face. “Grinsa did that?”

  “Grinsa and Fotir did it together.”

  “Demons and fire!”

  “He risked a great deal saving me from Aindreas.”

  “How does the archminister know?”

  Tavis hesitated, then shook his head. “Some secrets aren’t mine to tell. I’m sorry.”

  Xaver dismissed the apology with a wave of his hand. The resentment he had expressed just a short time before seemed to have vanished. “Thanks for telling me as much as you did.”

  The young lord grimaced. “I suppose you feel that I’ve been keeping a lot from you.”

  “I understand,” his friend said, shrugging.

  “I’ve wanted to tell you more, Stinger. Really. But I couldn’t. I probably shouldn’t have even told you this, but you were bound to find out eventually, I expect sooner rather than later.”

  “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “I know. It’s never been a matter of my not trusting you. As I said before, they’re just not my secrets to tell.” He gazed southward once more. He couldn’t be certain, but it appeared that the Solkarans had halted their advance. “I never knew that so many people in this realm had so much to hide.”

  “What’s going on back there?” Xaver asked, shielding his eyes from the sun as he gazed toward the Aneirans.

  “I’m not sure. It looks like they’re fighting.”

  “You’re right, but against who? Surely not Grinsa and the others.”

  “No, there’s another army behind them.” They shared a look, the realization hitting both of them at once. “Come on!” Tavis said, breaking into a run. “We need to tell my father!”

  * * *

  It galled him to ride under Kearney’s banner and Gershon’s command. Aindreas knew that he deserved far worse, having defied the king at every opportunity, having betrayed the realm, though none of his companions knew this. Still, he led one of the realm’s leading houses. Surely he deserved to ride under his own colors, as did Tremain and Labruinn. But with all that he had done, with the prospect of admitting his treachery hanging over him like the black smoke of siege fires, he couldn’t bring himself to protest. Gershon, Lathrop, and Caius had saved his castle from Aneira’s siege before setting out after the Solkaran army, which had marched northward to join forces with Braedon’s warriors. And Aindreas, faced with the prospect of remaining behind with his wine and the ghost of his daughter, or riding to war with these men, had chosen the latter. He had sensed Gershon’s reluctance to let him join the king’s army, and truly, he could hardly blame the man. What choice did he have but to submit to the swordmaster’s authority? He ordered his men to march at the rear of the King’s Guard, and he rode beside Gershon and the other dukes, saying little, enduring their sidelong glances and strained courtesy as best he could. In the rush to leave Kentigern Tor, he hadn’t thought to bring any wine. A pity. Not a night went by when he wouldn’t have sold his dukedom for a cup of Sanbiri red.

  He had no cause to resent Gershon. The swordmaster had treated him civilly since their departure from Kentigern, though clearly it pained him to do so. Nor did he have any right to hate the king. Hadn’t Kearney’s decision to grant asylum to the Curgh boy been vindicated long ago? Hadn’t the man given Aindreas every opportunity to redeem himself and his house? Hadn’t he saved Kentigern from the Aneirans twice now, despite Aindreas’s continued defiance? Kearney’s grace, his willingness to forgive, left Aindreas humbled and ashamed, which might well have been why he did it. No doubt it was the source of the duke’s bitterness. For when he asked himself if he would have been so generous being in the king’s place, he was forced to admit that he would not.

  Despite his hostility toward the swordmaster, Aindreas could not help but admire the man’s qualities as a leader. He pushed the armies hard as they pursued the Aneirans northward, resting only when absolutely necessary, and marching well into the night. It was hard to say whether the enemy knew they were being followed—they set a punishing pace for themselves as well. Still Gershon and the dukes gained on them, slowly but steadily.

  As demanding as Gershon was of the men under his comman
d, his orders never provoked a single complaint, at least none that the duke heard. Perhaps it was because Caius and Lathrop and Aindreas himself deferred to the man. Perhaps the soldiers understood that the very survival of the realm was at stake. Or perhaps it was just that Gershon looked so formidable on his mount, with his clean-shaven head, blunt features, and icy blue eyes. Whatever the reason, Aindreas had seen few swordmasters who were as revered by their men as Gershon Trasker was by his.

  By the end of the seventh day of their march, the Aneirans certainly knew that they were being followed. Gershon had brought his vast army within sight of the invaders, and though the enemy didn’t flag or turn to face the Eibitharians, neither could they increase the distance between the two forces. Like wild dogs snapping at the heels of a stag, the armies of the realm drove the enemy across the Moorlands. The Aneirans might reach the rest of the Eibitharian army first, but they would barely have time to raise their swords before Gershon’s force struck at them.

  Eibithar’s army continued to close the distance throughout the following day. By the approach of dusk, as the sun was balanced huge and orange on the western horizon, they were close enough to the Aneirans for Aindreas to make out the red Solkaran panther on the army’s banner. With luck, they would catch the enemy the next day.

  “Still no sign of the empire’s army,” he heard Gershon say, as they continued to ride.

  For a moment he thought to answer himself, but Lathrop responded before he could say anything. They hadn’t gone out of their way to speak with him thus far. Why should they start now?

  “I’d been thinking the same thing,” Tremain said. “Perhaps it means that the king withstood the first assault.”

  “And more, I’d guess. If the empire’s army had overrun the king and his allies, they’d be farther south by now.”

  “I hope you’re right, swordmaster.”

  “In either case, we have no choice but to keep moving until we catch the Solkarans. We must be getting near to the king’s army and we can’t allow the enemy to reach them first. With the empire attacking from the north, they’ll cut through his lines like a sword through parchment. And if by some chance Braedon’s forces have already defeated him, we’d do well to defeat the Aneirans before they can join with a larger force. Tell your men that we march through the night. We’re not going to stop until we catch the enemy.”

  Lathrop nodded, as did the duke of Labruinn. A moment later, they both turned their mounts and headed back to speak with their men. Gershon glanced over his shoulder at Aindreas, as if expecting him to comply with the order as well.

  “Do you disagree, my lord?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You just don’t like the idea of taking commands from a man who’s common-born.”

  Aindreas opened his mouth, then closed it again.

  “I thought so,” Gershon said, a thin smile springing to his lips and vanishing as quickly.

  “Actually that’s not it either.”

  “Then what? You feel you’ve been treated unfairly? To be honest, my lord, I believe you’re fortunate to be a free man. I don’t mind telling you that if I’d had my way, you would have been thrown in your own dungeon and left there to rot. But I had orders from His Majesty, and unlike you, I do as my liege tells me.”

  He should have been outraged. Had his soldiers been nearby, they would have had to be restrained from killing the man. At least, the duke wanted to believe that this was so. The truth was that he deserved to be spoken to in this way. He hadn’t seen Brienne’s ghost—or whatever it was that haunted his days and nights—since leaving Kentigern, but he didn’t need her to tell him that he had placed the realm at risk with all he had done since her murder, and for no good reason at all.

  “You think me impudent for speaking to you so.”

  “Please stop putting words in my mouth, swordmaster. The truth is, I wish that I hadn’t done so much to deserve your contempt. I’ll see to my men right away.”

  He wheeled his mount, intending to do just as he had said.

  “My lord, wait.”

  Aindreas would have liked to ride away and leave this insolent swordmaster to chew on whatever it was he wished to say. But something stopped him—the man’s tone, his own surety that he had already done too much to drive a wedge between his house and the Crown. Reluctantly, he faced the swordmaster again, saying nothing.

  “I’m—” Trasker looked away briefly. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you so. It was … inappropriate.”

  The duke could think of no reply. After several moments, he simply nodded and rode back to his men.

  Aindreas had left his swordmaster, Villyd Temsten, in Kentigern, refusing to trust anyone else with the protection of his castle and family. The captains he had brought with him were good men—brave, loyal—but they were not deep thinkers, and they had even less sense of what the duke had done to earn the king’s enmity than did Villyd. Clearly they did not feel that soldiers of Kentigern should be marching under the king’s banner. They accepted their duke’s orders, and began immediately to convey them to the rest of the Kentigern army, but they made it clear to the duke, with their expressions and their flat voices, that they disapproved of his willingness to yield to Gershon’s authority. Returning to the head of the great column, Aindreas was forced to wonder anew if he had been wrong to make this journey.

  An image of Jastanne ja Triln entered his mind, pale and lithe and lovely. He saw her as she had appeared that night he forged his alliance with the conspiracy, looking young and unassuming, an illusion she shattered, along with a wine goblet, using her shaping power. What would she do when she learned that he had marched with Kearney’s army? Would she and her Qirsi allies reveal his treachery immediately? Would they seek vengeance against Ioanna or his children, or would they content themselves with destroying his name? Perhaps these fears should have given him pause, made him wonder how he might aid the conspiracy here on the Moorlands. Instead they emboldened him.

  For so long he had allowed his shame and fright to render him helpless. Not anymore. Casting his lot with the Qirsi had been the greatest mistake of his life, a desperate gambit born of grief and rage and drunken foolishness. He would pay for that error until his death, and long after he was gone his family would continue to pay. But maybe he could mitigate some of the harm he had done by making a hero of himself in the coming war. Not this one with Aneira and Braedon, but the real war against the Qirsi renegades, the one that would decide the fate of all the Forelands. That was the hope that drove him onward, that left him unmoved by the dismay of his captains. They couldn’t possibly understand. Up until a few days ago, he hadn’t either, though he should have. It remained to be seen if the realization had come to him too late.

  True to his word, Gershon kept the army moving well past sundown, stopping only long enough to feed and water the horses, allow the soldiers to eat, and light their torches. The Solkarans didn’t stop for long either, but they could not increase their lead on the Eibitharians. When the two moons finally rose high enough into the star-filled sky to illuminate the grasses and boulders of the moor, Eibithar’s men doused their torches and quickened their pace, but it seemed the Solkarans did the same, for the enemy’s torch fire had vanished.

  Their first indication that the Aneirans had halted was the barrage of arrows that pelted down just in front of the column. Aindreas’s horse reared, more because of the duke’s startled response than because of the arrows themselves, but Aindreas managed to keep himself from falling.

  “Damn!” Gershon spat, fighting to control his mount as well. More arrows struck the ground before them, but all of them fell short.

  “We were fortunate,” Lathrop said.

  “We were careless. I was careless,” Gershon corrected. He peered ahead, eyes narrowed, trying to see the enemy in the dim glow of Ilias and Panya. Then he beckoned to one of his captains, who was marching a short distance behind the dukes and swordmaster. Immediately the man hurried forward. �
�Call our archers forward,” he said quietly.

  The man nodded and ran back toward the king’s soldiers.

  Lathrop frowned. “Do you think they mean to fight us here?”

  “I’m not certain what they have in mind. But they’ve loosed two volleys now to no avail. I expect they’ll move their bowmen closer and try again. I want to be ready when they do.”

  It didn’t take long for Kearney’s archers, three hundred strong, to reach the front of the column.

  “I’d suggest you move back, my lords,” Gershon said. “I don’t want a chance dart to strike one of you.”

  Caius shook his head. “I have a better idea.” He waved Gershon’s captain to his side. “Please, Captain, have my bowmen brought forward as well.”

  The captain glanced at Trasker, who, after a moment’s pause, nodded.

  “Mine as well, Captain,” Lathrop said.

  Aindreas twisted his mouth for just an instant. “Better call for mine as well.” The others regarded him silently. “Well, I can’t let it be said that Kentigern shied from a fight, can I?”

  “Thank you, my lords,” Gershon said, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “Though I’d still feel better if the three of you moved back a bit.”

  Lathrop glanced briefly at Aindreas and the duke of Labruinn before looking at Gershon again. “It would seem, swordmaster, that your authority over us only goes so far.”

  Gershon’s smile broadened. “Yes, my lord. May I at least ask that you dismount and ready your shields?”

  This the dukes did.

  Soon the king’s archers were joined by six hundred more from the dukes’ armies. Moments later, another swarm of arrows descended upon them, and this time many of them struck true. Eibithar’s bowmen had brought shields as well as their bows and quivers, but still a number of them fell, their screams making Aindreas flinch beneath his shield.

  “Loose your arrows at will!” Gershon called.

  And a moment later the moor seemed to sing with the thrumming of so many bows. Cries of pain rose from the Aneiran army, like a distant echo of those that had come from Eibithar’s sons a few seconds before.