Perhaps he could send a message to young Halveric that way. If they come to battle, it would be a bloody business, killing a lot of good mercenaries for the profit of Vonja in the Guild League . . . and maybe that was what Vonja planned. Some realms hated and feared mercenaries, even if they hired them. If that was Vonja’s plan, weakening or destroying two competent mercenary companies—then not only Halveric but other companies were at risk. He paced his office, on the second level of his new house, thinking out the possibilities, and finally sat down to write a message. He would send it even if his people didn’t catch that scout. For the rest of the day, he went out in the town, chatting with his citizens and his own soldiers. At dinner, he told his captains his plan to attempt a truce with Halveric.
“I’m not sure, Commander . . . my lord, I mean.”
Ilanz waved his hand. “Never mind formalities. This is a military conversation. What’s your assessment of young Halveric?”
“Smart, tough, increasingly competent, and . . . a very solid sense of honor. I cannot see him breaking a contract, even with Vonja.”
“He has presented himself as a man of honor, that is true,” Ilanz said. “But there is more than one kind of honor. If, as I suspect, Vonja has lied to him, has broken faith with him, I think—I hope—he will see that keeping faith with the faithless is foolish and merely teaches our employers that they can break their word to us with impunity.” He spread his hands on the table, the scarred hard hands of a man thirty years a mercenary. One finger missed a joint, two had healed crookedly from being broken. “If he does not, we will have to fight him, and that will cost us. And him. And possibly the town as well, not only from the losses to our force, but . . . well . . . nothing in war is known until the battle’s over.”
Finally, late that night, he went to bed, leaving the single lamp burning as always. He had to know, the instant he awoke, if he still had sight in one eye or had gone completely blind. He set his town shoes by the table, his boots at the end of the bed, his sword in the fold of blanket. Then he slept.
He woke facedown in his bed, a weight on his back and his wrists already bound. Whoever was there breathed heavily, had sweaty hands and a very sharp knee, and smelled of blood and unwashed male. He tried to twist his wrists free, and the weight shifted. A dagger tip lay under his right ear, just firm enough to make it unmistakable.
“Be quiet.”
He nodded. By the feel, the bindings on his wrist were no thicker than shoelaces. He could break those later, when the dagger was not so near his life. Weight left his back as whoever it was climbed off the bed, but the dagger’s touch never left his neck. Someone with experience, then. A thief in his town? He was incensed; even a thief should recognize that Ilanz was the town’s only hope of freedom.
“Who are you?” the voice demanded. “Tell me true. Will they ransom you?”
Ransom? What was this?
“Sit up!” the voice went on. “I want to see your face.” A hand grabbed his shoulder, tugged. Ilanz rolled with the tug, giving momentary thought to the attack he could make as he rolled over and up to sitting, but the first glimpse of his assailant put that out of mind. He saw a stripling boy, his face disfigured by a rapidly swelling bruise from brow to cheekbone on the right side, but on the left—he knew that face, though the boy’s sweat-darkened hair looked more brown than red in the lamplight.
“You’re Halveric’s squire,” he said, keeping his voice low. “The redhead.”
“You’re Commander Balentos,” the lad said. “I saw you in Valdaire.”
Ilanz sent a quick prayer of thanks to Simyits; the trickster god had favored him once again. He could see now that the squire had one sleeve of a peasant shirt half torn off, and blood marked it.
“Did you come to kill me?” he asked. If Halveric had sent an assassin, he had misjudged Halveric’s character and would have to change his plans.
“No!” That sounded genuine, disgust and anger mixed. “I didn’t know you were here until I . . . well, I was running away from them.”
From Ilanz’s own troops, presumably. “Why did you come into town?”
“They made me. I had to get away—”
“Well . . . what are you going to do now?”
He could practically see the thoughts running through the boy’s head, the kind of thoughts any young squire would have. The boy had found and disabled the enemy commander . . . which in some circumstances would make him a hero . . . or dead. Glory, danger, fear, pride. What next? Would he think to kill Ilanz, threaten him and demand his own freedom, or—
“I will take you to my commander,” the boy said.
Of course. Ilanz almost grinned; instead he nodded, keeping his expression serious. “That is a sensible thing to do.”
“Sir—I mean—”
“Your commander needs to know what he faces here. I am the best person to tell him. You think clearly, young man. What is your name?”
A moment of silence; the boy started to scowl, then winced at the pain. How bad was that injury? Would the boy lose that eye? Then he answered. “Kieri Phelan . . . sir.”
Mannerly, intelligent . . . Halveric must be a good teacher, as well as a good commander. And the boy himself was far out of the ordinary. High-born, almost certainly, and possessed of something very like the magery that cropped up now and again in Ilanz’s own family.
“We cannot just go down and out the front, Kieri,” Ilanz said. “My soldiers are too many for you to hold me at hazard if they see you. They would kill you to free me. How did you get in? Can we get out that way?”
“I . . . think so. Yes.”
“Good. We should start. Only . . . I need something on my feet. I cannot walk to your camp barefoot.” He looked at the floor beneath the table . . . there were his shoes, and sure enough the laces were missing. “Let me stick my feet in those—”
“You won’t try to escape?”
Ilanz managed a shrug. “I have been wondering how to contact your commander. And here you are, offering to lead me. Although, as part of your education as squire, Kieri, you should not trust me. I might, after all, turn on you, grab that dagger, tie your hands, and march you straight up to your commander, which would be a disgrace, would it not?”
The boy’s mouth quirked. “It would . . . and I do not intend to let that happen. There’s a sword in your bed; I felt it when I climbed on—”
Ilanz shook his head. “Advice, and I swear by Tir it’s true: do not take my sword. It is much easier to disarm a man with a sword than a man with a dagger, if you have my experience. Everything in this room is a weapon to me, were I free. Also—just to show my honesty in this—if I should stumble, do not out of pity unbind my hands. There is no one in all Aarenis who could govern my movements were I unbound.” He watched the boy’s face, saw comprehension as quick as he’d hoped. “Of course, that means you will have to help me put on those shoes.” He stuck out one foot, and waited.
Another pause he did not quite understand, then the boy knelt, keeping his gaze on Ilanz’s face, and picked up both shoes. Far more deftly than Ilanz expected, he slipped one shoe on the foot, then—as Ilanz put that foot down and lifted the other—put the other shoe on the other foot. For a wonder, he had them on the correct feet. Not everyone wore such shoes, but Ilanz had a bony growth on one foot that made them necessary.
“May I stand?” Ilanz asked.
“Make no rash moves,” the boy said. “Over there, where a panel is open, stairs go down. Quietly . . .”
The night air was more chill than Ilanz expected, and somewhere in the walk to Halveric’s camp he got a small sharp stone in his left shoe. Simyits’s price for the help earlier, he supposed. He’d paid more, in the past. Halveric’s sentries were alert; he approved the way they reacted to the discovery of an enemy commander, barelegged in a nightshirt, being guided and guarded by a boy. No smirks, no laughter, but an escort to Halveric’s tent.
Halveric was awake by the time they got there, boots on his f
eet and his shirt at least partly tucked into his trousers. Ilanz saw Halveric’s eyes widen as he recognized Ilanz. Ilanz inclined his head.
“Commander Halveric,” he said.
“Commander Balentos. I am . . . surprised.”
“So would I be. Of your courtesy, if I give my pledge, could your men unbind my hands? I am, as you see, without weapons. And there is a stone in my left shoe.”
“Donag,” Halveric said. “Free Commander Balentos.”
Ilanz stood still as two other soldiers stepped forward, swords out, and one moved behind him. He felt the cold edge of a dagger slide between his wrists and the thongs that bound them.
Halveric spoke to someone inside the tent. “Garris?”
A boy’s voice answered. “Yes, m’lord?”
“Light us a lamp in the tent, and set up another chair.”
Ilanz’s hands fell free; he rubbed his wrists. Halveric’s soldier put the cut pieces of shoelace in his hands and saluted, an unexpected courtesy. Halveric, he saw, had looked past him to his captor.
“Kieri, I am sure you have a report to give, but see the surgeon first, clean up, and dress.”
“It’s not my blood, m’lord,” the boy said. “Or most of it isn’t.”
“That was an order, Squire.” The boy bowed and left them. Then, to Ilanz, “He wasn’t supposed to go into the town after you—he was supposed to go around the town to the border and find out if Sorellin troops were waiting to move in. Please—come into my tent and take some refreshment.” He pulled the tent flap aside.
“He told me how he came to be sitting on my back tying my wrists,” Ilanz said, limping forward. “I do not blame you; I did not think you were the sort to send an assassin. As it is, I am glad to have a chance to talk to you; there’s a letter to you on my desk back there, which I had meant to send you tomorrow.”
Halveric’s tent was the size Ilanz’s captains used—just one large room, with two cots on either side and room for a table and chairs in the middle. Ilanz sat down on one chair and kicked off his left shoe; the stone fell out. He looked at his foot—no blood, just a sore spot—and put the shoe back on.
Halveric poured wine and then water into two mugs and nodded to Ilanz. Ilanz picked up one; Halveric took the other, and they both sipped. “Would you like a robe?” Halveric asked.
Ilanz laughed. “Would I like a robe? I tell you, Commander Halveric, what I would like. I would like to be asleep in my own bed, wake up tomorrow after a full night’s sleep, send you my letter, and hear in return that you agreed there was no profit in an assault on my town. That is what I would like.”
Halveric looked back at him. “I have a contract,” he said.
“Yes, of course you do. You contracted with Vonja—everyone in Valdaire knew they had come to you, and I would almost lay odds—though Simyits has been generous to me already tonight—that I know what they offered and what you argued them up to. I suspect they called you in when their troops came home empty-handed and offered you a bonus to put down a rebellion up here in Margay.”
“They did.” Halveric nodded. “But they did not tell me you were here. I had suspected your presence, and while we are being so open, I know you have more troops, and archers, than you had last year.”
Ilanz chuckled. “I knew you were good. A squire like that red-haired lad is more useful picking information out of gossip than a trained spy, isn’t he?”
“Several of them are,” Halveric said. He got up and pulled a box out from under a cot with the covers all in a jumble. His, no doubt. While he rummaged inside, Balentos looked at the others: one squire snoring, a much younger one sitting up bright-eyed and curious on the most distant cot. The tent was orderly, but spare. Halveric had, he suspected, poured every nata of profit into his men’s equipment and supplies. A good way to start, but now he should be learning to show his status.
The robe Halveric brought was broad enough—Halveric was his match in shoulders and chest—but short. Still, he looked and felt less like a beggar and more like a guest with it on.
“So,” Halveric said when he sat down again, dropping two long leather thongs on the table in front of Ilanz. “What was in your letter?”
Ilanz picked up a thong and threaded it through the slits in one shoe. “I will be brief. Years ago, when I myself held a contract with Vonja, I was sent up here to deal with a border issue with Sorellin, and first saw Margay. Just such a place, I thought, as I would like to retire in, but very badly governed. They saw the tax collectors and the militia escorting them twice in the year, but no help whatever with Sorellin incursions or brigands down from the mountains.” He picked up the other thong and refastened his other shoe.
Halveric nodded but said nothing.
“So a few campaign seasons ago, when I heard rumors of the town considering rebellion, I made a short visit. By myself. They remembered me; I had occasionally visited before. I talked to their town council, and we came to an agreement. The protection I could give, in trade for their allegiance to me as a lord. I advised them on fortifications—how to build new houses, how to arrange the town a little differently, how to build a wall. We set up regular courier contact.”
“You . . . encouraged them to rebel?”
“They were going to anyway. And in this location they would be constantly harassed by Vonja and Sorellin squabbling over them. You know where that leads.”
“Yes,” Halveric said. “Destruction, ruined crops, dead civilians.”
“I can prevent that,” Ilanz said. He straightened, easing his back. “Maybe even long enough for it to last, though I can’t promise. Didn’t promise. And I will tell you what I think, from your expression, you have already seen in the light of this lamp: I am going blind. One eye already—and all the gold I spent for wizards’ potions and spells and the prayers of every priest who would listen only slowed the blindness. They tell me the other eye will go as well, and cannot tell me how long—a few years, perhaps ten. That’s why I decided on this, a place I could stay and defend. I don’t need two good eyes for that. So—you said Vonja lied to you about the situation up here?”
“Greedy merchants who didn’t want to pay taxes, maybe gulled by Sorellin, which has sought to encroach before. Small town, hardly more than a village, just a waystation on the north trade route, no war experience, no fortifications, should be simple.” Halveric said that in a mincing falsetto. Then he grinned, showing teeth. “I don’t believe it when someone says it will be simple.”
“Mmm. Have you seen Margay since your own last visit—four years ago, wasn’t it?”
“No.”
“We now have a wall well over man-high, with appropriate reinforcement at the gates. Streets redesigned for defense, with some fortified buildings. Ample stores and water to withstand a siege . . . and my troops.”
Halveric uttered something in a foreign tongue that crackled with anger.
Ilanz didn’t need to know the words; he knew the tone. “You run a good company, Commander Halveric,” he said. “I do not think it is as good as mine—that comes with more experience—but on some days you might defeat us. A battle between us could be—would be—ruinous for us both.” He paused. Would Halveric get the point? Would he say it if he did?
“You think Vonja wants us to destroy each other?”
“I wish I knew Sorellin’s role in this,” Ilanz said, stretching his legs. “Do they want Margay for themselves? They did once. Or do they agree with Vonja that there’s a danger of mercenaries becoming too powerful?”
“Their envoy said they had no interest in Margay, but refused to say Sorellin would not let Margay in if it won free of Vonja.”
“They still want it, then. And if Margay is weakened enough by a battle between your people and mine, they may come and take it.”
Halveric sat forward. “Look here . . . it’s clear you want me to break my contract and just go away—”
Ilanz shook his head. “No. You are smart enough to know Vonja will have spies out
in the hills—Sorellin will, too. I think you should proceed as you would have, up to a point: send out scouts, discover that the town is heavily fortified and defended, and—what would you do then?”
Halveric shrugged. “My contract requires me to try to take it, reduce the rebellion, and bring the guilty parties to Pler Vonja.”
“Yes. And if they had told you the truth about what you faced up here, would you have accepted the additional assignment?”
“I . . . probably not. We’ve never fought you, but we’ve heard from those who have . . . . You need a twenty percent advantage to win and fifty percent to win cleanly. And that’s at the size you were before you hired more men last winter.”
“So Vonja’s lies put you in a situation where you must either break a contract—risking your reputation—or fight a battle against a superior force—risking not just lives but your company’s existence. Because you know, as well as I, how many you would lose in a direct confrontation. Do you know what Guild League law says about parties to a contract?”
“Does it say if one lies about its part the other can wiggle out of an obligation?” Halveric’s jaw muscles bunched.
“More than that. The party misrepresenting serious danger may be brought before the Guild League’s High Court and may be judged fraudulent, penalized with high fines, some portion of which comes back to the injured party. At least, I would think, the amount of your bonus and the unpaid part of your base contract.” Ilanz took another swallow of the watered wine. Halveric’s face had gone blank, his eyes mostly hidden beneath lowered lids. “And yes, a mercenary company has brought such an issue before the High Court and won. It doesn’t make friends of the employer, but it does make the point that we are not mere sword-wheat, to be scythed down for profit.” Another swallow, another glance at Halveric’s face. The eyes were open now, watching him, the expression wary. “I know a judicar in Valdaire familiar with the law involved.”
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