by Tim Stead
“Of course you are,” he smiled more properly. “And I only need a few things.”
“You’re going to talk to Aidon?”
“Perhaps. I need to think.”
He wrapped himself in a thick winter cloak and left her, walking along the corridors almost at random until he came at last to the small garden court that overlooked the low city. It was here that he had talked with the wolf; here that he had learned the reality of their situation. He sat alone in the cold. It was a blue, still day, full of bright, low sunlight, and it caught the smoke rising from a thousand chimneys below and made it look like a forest of yellow columns, rising and spreading, fading until the sky was just a paler blue high above the streets.
Something was wrong. It was like an unpleasant smell in the air. People behaved the same way they had always behaved around him, but somehow they did it differently, and it was not everyone. Although he had spoken to nobody but Maryal he was fairly sure than he was alone in feeling what he felt. It made him think that he might be wrong. The whole business could simply be a fabrication of his own imagination, brought about by the tensions of war and the natural rivalries between houses and factions. Such things did not go away just because a war loomed. Sometimes they were magnified.
He became aware of another presence in the garden court, and looked around. There was a man standing beside one of the entrances, leaning comfortably against a wall. Quin did not recognise him, but he was certainly not a servant. The man was dressed mostly in black, his trousers and cottons were simple and night coloured, but his tunic and cloak were finely worked with white thread, embroidered with a pattern of small, white flowers, the ones called Mountain Dew in Avilian. He wore a sword. It was an old fashioned weapon, long and slender if the sheath was to be believed, and the hilt was beautifully detailed. He was watching Quin with a calm, confident expression on his face, a face that was well proportioned, olive skinned, and topped by dark and unfashionably short hair through which ran a circlet of silver, an adornment Quin could not recall having seen before. He allowed Quin to study him for a moment.
“My lord Quinnial,” he said.
“You have the advantage,” Quin said.
The man bowed. It wasn’t a nod of the head, but a proper, polite and courtly bow. “I apologise, my lord. I am Hesham, Earl of Lorrimal.”
“Lorrimal? I know the name. You have estates in the north, on the borders of the great plain. We don’t see you or your kin very often here in Bas Erinor, Lord Hesham. What brings you here now?”
“The war, my lord, and I congratulate you on your mastery of protocol. Not many know our family exists, never mind where we come from.”
“And I must criticize your knowledge, lord Hesham. As you are an Earl we are technically of equal rank, and therefore you should address me as Lord Quinnial, and not my lord.”
Hesham smiled. “As you wish, Lord Quinnial.”
Quin stood. “Well, I’m pleased to have met you,” he said. “But there are things I must do. I am leaving in the morning.”
“To Saylarish? The rumour is common, Lord Quinnial,” he said noting Quin’s surprise.
“I expect it is,” Quin said.
“But may I keep you a moment? I would like to speak to you.”
“On what matter?”
“The war, Lord Quinnial.”
“The war. Yes. Everyone is talking about the war. Why not?” Quin sat down again with a sigh, and Hesham approached, but did not sit. He could not help but note that the man walked with extraordinary grace, like a dancer, like a master fencer. He allowed his eyes to drift to the hilt of the sword again; a craftsman’s tool, no doubt of it.
“It would seem that we are not winning,” Hesham said.
“To the untutored eye, yes.”
“And to the tutored eye?”
“There are plans, Lord Hesham. The Wolf is our commander, and I trust in his wisdom. He will not fail us.”
“He has not confided his plans? You trust him as much as that?” Hesham sounded disbelieving. The implication was that anyone would be foolish to trust so much. Quin looked at him sharply.
“I sit on the council of Avilian. There are plans, Lord Hesham. I am both aware of them and in agreement with them.”
“But they are not to be shared with your peers, Lord Quinnial? Ignorance breeds dissatisfaction, and there is much that an inquisitive man can discover. There are no real secrets. Apart from the obvious.”
“The obvious?”
“Forgive me for saying so, but your brother the Duke is young. You are young. Wiser heads should advise your dealings with the Benetheon. Their interests and ours do not always coincide. It is common knowledge that the Wolf favours the low born.”
“You know as well as I do that the Benetheon is forbidden from favouring the mighty.”
“And yet we all know the tale of Alaran. But it is not of such specific favour that I speak. To whom does he trust his armies? Is it to some great lord? No. He trusts an innkeeper.”
“It was not Narak, but I who gave command of the Seventh Friend to Cain Arbak.”
“At the Wolf’s suggestion, I do not doubt. He had taken the flower of nobility with him to the east – which in itself was a grave mistake.”
“And yet here we sit, undefeated. It seems that Narak’s mistakes are quite effective.”
“Luck, Lord Quinnial, and you know it. The innkeeper barely held the wall, and the army left a thousand men in the east to clean up the mess. There are no great triumphs to trumpet here. Who knows what the Wolf really wants?”
“The defeat of Seth Yarra. The continuance of Avilian, Berash, Afael and the other realms. It is obvious enough.”
“Is it?”
“You see some other pattern?”
“As I say, the Benetheon’s interests are not our own. Who knows what may be done where we cannot see it?”
“Are you saying the Wolf may be plotting with Seth Yarra?”
“I doubt he plots, Lord Quinnial, but he may indeed negotiate. After all, it is the forest that he is sworn to preserve, not Avilian.”
“Are you mad, Lord Hesham? Do you know what they call him, these Seth Yarra? They call him god killer, they name him a demon. I can let you speak with one if you like. We have prisoners.”
“I would not speak with Seth Yarra, Lord Quinnial. I would rather kill them, but the Wolf has other ideas, it seems. These prisoners you have, were they not the butchers that you captured at Henfray?”
“Lord Skal captured them, which in itself surprised me,” Quin confessed, remembering that he had himself asked Skal why the men were still alive.
“He brought them here for questioning, of course, but that done they should have been decently put to death for their crimes. But allow me to guess; it was the Wolf who insisted that they be preserved.”
“It was, but his reasons were quite sound…”
“And you ask me what other pattern I see?”
“I deny your accusation, Lord Hesham. The Wolf is no deceiver. If you knew him as I do you would see the error of your thinking.” But as he spoke the words Quin caught the echo of his own thoughts. The Wolf had secrets, he could not doubt it. He spoke only a part of what he knew. Yet even as he thought this he saw a shadow of a smile on Hesham’s face, a smile that had leaped into being at the words if you knew him. So he did, Quin thought. Hesham knew the Wolf. But how could that be if the man spoke like this. Yet the smile was barely there, then suppressed.
“We all have secrets, Lord Hesham,” he said. “I thank you for your words. You have given me something to chew on, no doubt of it. If you fence better with that blade than you do with words you must be a formidable duellist indeed.”
Hesham bowed, again the polite bow, bending from the waist. “Perhaps you would care to try me some time, Lord Quinnial.”
“Perhaps, Lord Hesham, but I fear it would be little sport for you.” He returned Hesham’s bow and walked out of the garden court, all the time feeling that he was no
t perfectly happy to have Hesham and his exquisite blade at his back. There was something infinitely threatening about the man.
23. The Contest
Skal didn’t know what he had expected: soldiers, perhaps; men in armour or mail with swords and helmets, men who walked in step with some pretence at a uniform. He had trusted Tilian to bring him a contingent of soldiers, and instead he had got, well, something else.
There were twelve of them. They were all the right age, fit and strong, but they were dressed in forester’s clothes, browns and greens, soft boots, short, thick coats. Each man wore a bow slung across his back, a quiver of arrows on the opposite shoulder and a staff fastened next to it, a short sword hung at each waist. It was a uniform of sorts, he supposed, but even the other troops looked askance at them.
“Tilian?”
The captain of the guard of Latter Fetch stood before his offering of men, not at all put off by the stares and pointing fingers.
“My lord.”
“These are the men you have trained?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“And what have you trained them to be, Tilian?” He could not keep a note of disappointment, even exasperation, out of his voice, but Tilian smiled.
“If I can choose the ground I’ll back these men against any fifty you pick from the regiment, my lord.”
Skal looked over the scruffy contingent again. Fifty? “Fifty?” he asked.
“Yes, my lord.”
Skal wasn’t a fool. Tilian would not say such a thing unless he was confident, and Skal remembered Welcart in the forest at Latter Fetch. The man had moved like a ghost through the trees, silent and invisible a few steps away.
“The forest,” he said to Tilian. “You want them to fight in the forest.”
“Yes, my lord.” Tilian looked momentarily surprised, but recovered quickly. He hadn’t expected Skal to guess.
“Tilian, battles are not fought in forests.”
“Why not, my lord?”
The question triggered a wealth of reasons, lines he’d learned by rote in strategy classes, but his mouth snapped shut on them, trapping them, unspoken. Why not indeed? If you had a body of men such as this they could attack and harass the enemy, and as Tilian knew, as Skal and everyone else knew the Seth Yarra army would attack through the White Road in spring, and to get to the White Road they had to travel more than two hundred miles through the Great Forest.
Skal raised a finger. “Clever,” he said. “The Great Forest.”
“It’s what I thought, my lord.”
Skal fingered the dagger in his belt and looked out over the rest of the regiment. These were town men, all of them. He wondered how many of the regular levies would have men like this, foresters and woodsmen, dressed in mail and standing in the line. He tested Tilian’s idea against what he knew, tried to find fault with it, but it answered to each and every one of his objections. It was a small force – could be a lot larger without it amounting to a risk, the odds of success were good, it would be unexpected. At best they would kill hundreds of the enemy, fray their discipline, delay them by weeks, and if it all failed, if the men were hunted down and killed it would still be a trivial loss to the army. These same men would be just a sacrifice to Maritan if placed in the line.
“I don’t want you to get yourself killed, Tilian,” he said. “I need you.”
The boy looked away. He still thought of him as the boy, but Tilian was no longer that. He was an officer. It was odd though. He looked away when Skal spoke to him, as though he did not want to hear those particular words.
“I will do my duty, my lord,” he said.
“And did I not tell you that one of your duties was to protect me?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“And you think that going into the great forest on winter’s tail with twelve men and attacking fifty thousand Seth Yarra is a way of accomplishing this goal?”
“I shall do as my lord commands, of course,” Tilian said. “But it seemed a better use of the men’s skills.”
“So it is.” Skal looked at Tilian. Something he had said had made the young man uneasy, but he could not put his finger on what it was. Whatever it was had gone now. “Well, then, I believe that you issued a challenge.” He turned to one of the watching men. “Sergeant, yes you, run to the general with a challenge. Fifty of his against twelve of mine, Myras woods, noon tomorrow, exercise rules. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.” The man turned and the small crowd parted before him.
Better this way, Skal thought. It would be bad to have Tilian’s men beat his own, or even the other way round. Regimental pride and rivalry being what it was, especially against their brother regiment, if they beat Cain’s men they would be chaired through the camp, loved by the men for the honour of it.
“You have until tomorrow noon to prepare your men, but nobody goes near the woods until ten minutes shy of the hour. This is going to be a fair contest.”
Tilian grinned, quite the boy again for a moment. “No, my lord,” he said. “It won’t be fair at all.”
* * * *
By eleven there were over two thousand people gathered on the slopes below Myras woods. The woods themselves grew upon a tract of land that covered some two hundred and thirty acres on the slopes below the great scarp, about two miles from the city walls of Bas Erinor. Gossip being what it was, word of the contest had spread through the city, and about half of the people gathered here were simple spectators, unconnected with either regiment, unless through some son or brother under arms.
Skal rode through the mob with Tilian at his side and the twelve foresters trailing behind him on foot. He moved slowly, the people before him stepping aside, craning their necks for a look at the twelve. Twelve against fifty was a good tale, and they wanted to see what sort of men such heroes might be. They were disappointed. The twelve foresters were all young men, Welcart having been left behind to care for the estate as landskeeper, and they chatted and joked as they ambled along, smiling nervously at people in the crowd. They were unused to crowds of any kind, and equally nonplussed by the attention. One or two of their regimental comrades slapped them on the shoulder or spoke words of encouragement, even though the twelve were strangers to them. It was a peculiar scene.
They stopped a bow shot short of the woods. Cain Arbak was already there, and tables and chairs had been set up for a group of relevant officers.
“So these are the men?” Cain asked as Skal approached. Skal dismounted.
“They are,” he said. “Men from my own estate.”
“Foresters,” Cain remarked.
Skal said nothing. He nodded and took a seat beside Cain.
“And they are to fight in a forest,” Cain added. He turned to Bargil who stood at his side. “Do you think we have been gulled, Tane?”
“I think the odds are fair, given the nature of the terrain, but what do I know of fighting in forests?” the man said.
“About as much as I do, I expect,” Cain replied. He turned back to Skal and offered him a glass of wine, which was accepted. “Shall we begin?”
Skal looked up at the sky. The sun was about as high as it was going to get. “I think it is time,” he said. “My men to enter first, and given a five minute start. Yours to follow and seek them out.”
“As you wish.”
Cain looked over his shoulder at the fifty men he had chosen. Skal recognised a few. They were all veterans of the wall, and steady, careful men. They were good men, better than most at their volunteer trade. Skal leaned close to Tilian.
“Take care,” he said. “These men are not fools.”
Tilian looked as though he was about to reply, but thought better of it and just nodded. His signalled his men and they trotted in silence towards the woods, all trace of jollity drained from their faces and manner. In moments they had passed from sight into the green shadows of the trees, and for the next five minutes Skal could detect no sound, no trace at all that the men were there.
“
I think that’s long enough,” Cain said.
“I concur,” Skal said. “Send in your men.”
Cain nodded, and the men of the First Seventh Friend moved forwards, not marching, but fanning out and advancing in a skirmishing line, at least half of them carrying bows with an arrow already on the string. From where he sat Skal could see the bulbous ends of the arrows, soft tipped and non lethal, but apt to leave a bright blue dye mark when the bag struck a body, and an impressive bruise. His own men carried the same tips, but with a red dye instead.
The men passed into the wood, and an expectant silence fell. It went on and on. Skal was surprised that it lasted as long as it did, and eventually a buzz of conversation rose from the crowd. He could hear the unmistakable sound of betting, a man calling odds, voices laying money one way or the other. Somewhere else he could hear a couple arguing, and off behind him children had begun to play a game, their shrieks and shouts carrying through the wall of people.
