TWOLAS - 03 - Warhost Of Vastmark

by Janny Wurts

  Impatient under flittering candlelight, a note out of place amid gold-leafed panels and glossy, tessellated marble, Duke Bransian s'Brydion of Alestron paced, still jinking in rowelled spurs and a surcoat blazoned with his family arms. The cloth was fine silk, but stitched over in patches where hard campaigns had sliced rents in the weave. A man who only shed his mail at night to sleep, and then solely behind guarded walls, he faced the window as Prince Lysaer entered. The imprint of steel links bitten into the nap of the mayor's velvet padded chairs betrayed the number of times he had arisen and sat again. The waxed gloss on the floors showed scuffs from his trips to doorway and casement to peer out.

  At the click of the door latch, he whirled about glowering like a bear baited onto its haunches. 'You do take your time, prince. I've been here an hour. Parrien should have been sent on this errand, except the virago he married would've knifed me had I ordered him off so soon. He can go, the hussy said, when she's bearing, which might not mesh with your war plans.'

  Lysaer strode forward, smiling. 'Welcome. Parrien will miss nothing in pleasing his bride since my war plans have suffered a setback. If you won't sit, I must.' He grasped a chair for himself, by seamless reflex checking the tray on the side table to make sure his servants had been punctual with instructions concerning refreshments. Never finicky about accepting hospitality, Bransian had decimated the light meal to a wreckage of unjointed bones and scattered crumbs. The dark ale Lysaer recalled as his preference was untouched, sure enough indication tonight's meeting was earmarked for argument.

  'I heard about your lady. A vicious shame.' Bransian's voice always rang too boisterous for even the largest room. His ice-flecked eyes swept a survey over Lysaer that could have counted scales on an adder. 'You don't seem shattered, I'm glad to see.'

  The sheen on the prince's jewels shifted only to his unsped breath. 'I can't afford to be shattered. The man we both hunt is too dangerous, which is why I requested to speak with you, and not Parrien.' Unwilling to test the duke's impatience, he cut straightaway to the gist. 'I'm going to need help from Alestron to defend my supply lines.'

  Bransian grasped a chair in his massive hands, spun it as though it were a toy, and straddled the seat, facing backward. His mailed limbs rattled over abalone inlay as he folded his forearms and leaned to an abused squeak of wood. 'Supply lines to where? Do you know yet?'

  'The leads dug up by Mearn's galleymen all point to the Cascain Islands. We're near having proof. The wool traders out of Forthmark repeat rumours of unusual activity among the shepherd tribes.' Lysaer locked the duke's glance with steady, wide-lashed candour. 'Arithon's training the archers of Vastmark, at a guess. We'll have to prepare very well to wage a campaign in those mountains.'

  The duke's furred eyebrows gathered over the bridge of his nose. 'That's a sharp move. Very.' The territory had no roads, no ports, no safe harbours; not even trees to break the weather or hide scouting forays and encampments. 'A defender's paradise,' Bransian allowed. 'You'll see your men get picked off like a lady's wing-clipped song sparrows.'

  'We'll have the numbers to expend, if need be,' Lysaer said. His own hands, arranged in laced stillness on his knee, did not tremble a hairsbreadth. 'But if the losses become severe, our morale won't last if provisions aren't kept on schedule. I have other cities willing to shoulder the burden, but none who won't suffer the predation of Shand's clansmen. Any pack trains through those wilds will be moving bait for covert raids and ambush.'

  Bransian uncoiled from his perch and circled the floor to a ringing slap of heels and chinked rowels. 'As clan-blood, you think we're immune to attack?'

  'As clanblood, I think you can speak the high earl's language,' Lysaer countered, more immediately concerned with the pitfalls of s'Brydion thorny temperament. 'Lord Erlien might not be overjoyed to have your troops trampling over his territory, but he'd scarcely kill your people out of hand.'

  The duke reached the casement, parked his knuckles, and peered out like a caged animal. Mailed links shivered hot points of reflection as he moved again and clashed a closed fist in his palm. 'I'm Melhalla's liegeman, not Shand's.'

  But Lysaer had studied his history. 'Melhalla has no surviving royal line and by legitimate birth I'm maternally descended from Shand's last crowned high king.'

  Bransian laughed. 'Ath. Make that claim to Erlien's face, you'll risk your twice-royal neck.' He swung his huge bulk from the casement, his bearded chin jutted in combative humour. 'You have steel, prince, I'll give you that. It's true. Lord Erlien's unlikely to wish a brangle between his fighting strength and mine. I'll agree to hold your supply lines with one promise from you as condition.'

  He waited, predatory; poised to reject the whole matter out of hand if the prince, with his honey silk manners, misstepped or backed off a fraction.

  Lysaer showed him a tolerant smile and said nothing, nor moved in impatience.

  The silence stretched into brittle tension, then grew weighted. Bransian's eyes glittered. His quiet transformed to intangible, coiled menace, until the street noise beyond the casement and the cry of a late-going water hawker would have caused a lesser man to flinch.

  'Dharkaron's avenging Chariot!' the duke said at length. His bristled poise departed in a strong, fluid stretch, then rebuilt as he cracked the knuckles in his sword hand. 'You haven't a live nerve in your body.'

  'But I have,' Lysaer countered. 'It's been dedicated to the death of Arithon s'Ffalenn. Is Alestron with me, or against?'

  'With you, of course.' Finished with popping his knuckles, the duke stamped in steel jingles to the side table, hefted the ale jug, and poured two foaming mugs. One he tossed off. The other he left filled and unclaimed, to test if the prince would rise to fetch it, or expect a liegeman's service.

  Lysaer did neither one.

  Deadlocked at his own strategy, Lord Bransian licked the foam from his moustache and gave way with cheerful grace. 'I'll hold your supply lines on express condition that my mercenary troops and half of my garrison shall battle at the forefront in Vastmark. Alestron's officers must share voice in your war councils. We're sworn to Melhalla's royal charter, which means we don't serve. Never under another realm's prince. And my captains don't like nursemaiding pack trains. They'll have to be given some incentive to sharpen their troops back to form in a snapping, rough bloody fight.'

  Amusement curved Lysaer's lips. 'You're not worried they'll be gutted like a lady's wing-clipped songbirds?'

  'Sithaer, no.' All expansive good nature, now, Bransian refilled his mug, then passed the other as a courtesy to the prince. 'Any man of mine who gets his arse bested by some wool-spinning shepherd is no one I want to bring back. Drink to the Shadow Master's death,' he invited. His broad-handed toast encompassed the casement and implied vague direction to the north. 'I have to be gone on the morrow. The quarrymen in Elssine are cutting the blocks for a new drum tower. Keldmar's favoured stonemason's convinced if nobody checks the load, the granite they ship will be cut the wrong way for the grain.'

  Since s'Brydion tradition held that toasts became a contest to see who wound up drunk beneath the table, Lysaer kept late hours in the mayor's study. When at last he wrangled his way free, Duke Bransian stood propped in the window, rollicking through tavern ballads at the top of his lungs, and setting the kennelled pack of tracking hounds to howling.

  Several dozen casements had banged open, with citizens shouting protest over their disrupted sleep. Bransian ignored them. Large as he was, and cantankerous as a mercenary, the mayor's house steward crept outside the door, too petrified to intercede.

  Lysaer gave the harried man a sympathetic shrug, then made his quiet way to his chambers.

  There, in words that carefully masked his relief, he excused his last, hovering servants. Behind locked doors, alone, he threw off his restraint. He paced, hollow-eyed, across and across the rich carpets. No one, not even his personal valet, was permitted to glimpse the unquiet strain upon him since the day his lady fell captive. When he tired, but
could not sleep, he sat long, aching hours, lacing together fraught nerves.

  This night, like many another before, bled slowly away to cold light. A renewed spill of silver woven through by the stainless, sweet notes of birdsong heralded yet another dawn. Lysaer knitted back his facade of self-control and prayed that his stamina would last through the hours until he could retire again in solitude.

  The fear never left him, that his hold on self-mastery might crumble. A chance word, a careless expression, a wrongly pitched word or inflection might reveal the buried depths of his anguish. The prospect was unthinkable, that anyone beyond Diegan should discover the true depths of his love for Talith.

  Her captor was s'Ffalenn, and calculating as a fiend. Let Arithon have wind of what power he held to hand; let any clan enemy or nervous mayor discover how his feelings for his wife could bleed him to agony, and the risk was too real that such means could be used to pull him down.

  His brave words to his Lord Commander were no better than a sham, his bravado before Bransian a player's mask. Lysaer understood the stakes in his vulnerable hour of risk. Prince as he was, he was also human. The threads of his sovereign responsibility could be weakened. He guarded, in desperation, that the people who relied upon his unassailable integrity should never guess how fast he might be broken; how for one woman's life and safety, he might be worn down to sell them out.

  In the icy light of daybreak, Lysaer watched the tuck and dart of nesting martins. The art of fine statecraft was a cold man's game. Bitterly he understood this. Knowledge made fact no easier to bear, that through the month until the ransom on the solstice, he must bide, and stifle his passion to take punitive action. He had learned his lesson well through the attack at Minderl Bay: thoughtless response to provocation was his signal weakness. The Shadow Master knew too well how to pressure him beyond endurance, then strike to exploit the results.

  Left an untouched bed and a brace of chairs indented with crumpled cushions, the Prince of the West stood at last and summoned his chamber valet to freshen his appearance for his audience.

  He had no choice. Royal to the bone, he took what small solace his ruler's conscience would allow.

  The misfortunes inflicted by the s'Ffalenn pirates throughout his childhood had taught him not to wallow in his losses. Unlike his father, who had vented his frustration in unconstrained rages, Lysaer sought his ease in the measured, reasoned calm of sound statesmanship. As a forced play of strategy, Talith's abduction must be turned to something more than a blow to his heart and pride. Handled with boldness, he might seize a backhanded advantage and turn the affair into the linch pin of his plan to win back crown rule in Tysan. One bitter spark of gain could be salvaged out of disaster.

  Given the summer, through inspired diplomacy, he might bind a whole kingdom to allegiance.

  On Mayhem

  As the Royal Freedom and her fugitive passenger beat a laborious course upcoast, and Lysaer s'Ilessid's envoys raised gold for ransom, and armies for warfare in Shand, the Mad Prophet sat like a raisin swathed in burlap, his chin on his knees, on a sun-heated rock in Vastmark. For weeks, nothing had changed. Clear-minded as the sky that arched in cobalt glory above the serried summits, he bent his rapt and ruthless analysis upon Arithon s'Ffalenn, while under Caolle's experienced handling, shepherd archers were transformed into recruits. Since the men were natural marksmen, the clan war captain's efforts centred on teaching them discipline. From him, individuals learned the sly arts of concealment and the teamwork required for surprise action.

  Dakar weighed all he saw; and like a hand misdealt to a cardsharp, his conclusions were never straightforward as circumstance made them appear.

  Blunt as old nails, too tough to outface, Caolle earned quick respect through brute intimidation. His stentorian shout re-echoed up the slope as some green shepherd raised his head. 'Fiends plague, boy! Try that in battle, and an arrow through an eye will be your last sight on Ath's earth!'

  The guilty party ducked a hairsbreadth too late. Caolle's thrown sliver of shale sliced a punitive arc, then struck to a howled string of curses.

  Slit-eyed, brooding, Dakar gnawed at the calluses acquired through the tedium of twisting bowstrings. The clan war captain's rough nature held no mystery. His competence lay beyond question, his years of brutal experience an achievement few could stand down. Caolle judged his applicants and chose which to train, and which to send back to the sheep flocks. Women or men matched the mettle he demanded, or he refused them a place in the ranks.

  Sharp skill with a bow was not the sole quality he required of his trainees.

  Arithon s'Ffalenn, with his masterbard's empathy, need not haze tribesfolk to measure them. By turns acerbic and piercingly perceptive, he won their obedience through fast wits and invective that could peel away dignity like a scalpel. He shared his knowledge of field healing, or assisted Caolle with lessons in close-quarters fighting with sword and knife.

  Like the cat crouched to size up its victim, Dakar weighed words and actions, prepared to pounce on discrepancy. The freedom he longed for required hard evidence. Asandir and the Fellowship must be shown the unseen pitfall, if in fact the princely compassion displayed through a child's failed healing masked some deeper subterfuge, a diversion to shield a manipulative mind bound to a course of mass destruction.

  If Arithon was by nature the criminal Prince Lysaer had pledged to eradicate, Dakar would lay bare the truth.

  Another dusty, wind-raked morning passed, while shepherds practised the arts of stealth and ambush. Dakar watched arrows raze into grass targets to Caolle's peppery remonstrance. In the afternoon he trailed Arithon's passage through yet another survey of Vastmark's deep glens and conies. By the dim, orange light cast by tallow dips, he saw the day's observations inked onto a growing sheaf of maps. Notations showed which valleys could shelter flocks and families as hidden refuge, and which narrow passes might serve to run covert relays of messages. Curled in an unnoticed heap on musty fleeces, Dakar feigned sleep, while the talk rose and fell and grew heated through unending revisions in strategy. The odd phrase would yield him the buried, racked strain that harried Arithon's composure.

  Gone now, the ebullience which had won him the tribes' easy friendship; the lingering play with herdsmen and sheep stood replaced by unswerving competence. Steady as fine steel in drills with the archers, Arithon did his brooding in solitude. Dakar would see him walk the ridges in the silver fall of twilight, wrapped in deep quiet that masked thoughts. One attempt to follow was repulsed, first by words, then, when spoken daggers proved insufficient, for the task, by the incontestable, bared length of a sword.

  On the steep, dusty spurs that serried like knives above the meadows of Dier Kenton Vale, Arithon paced out the night alone, while the stars wheeled their high arcs across black Vastmark sky, and the sheep flocks pebbled the valley in fitful currents of movement. In the grey, dew-drenched dawn, Dakar retraced the same route. His dogged search discerned no trace signature of spellcraft. The layered, faulted beds of Vastmark shale remained as they ought, laced over in tough grasses and the tall, wind-combed stems of summer asters.

  Unwilling to bow before gnawing frustration, Dakar twisted gut bowstrings until his fingers gained another set of blisters. Against his grain as a hedonist, he made no complaint of plain rations. He bided the hours as the adder waits, tight laced into stillness, while other nights in close company Arithon laid his case before the tribal elders gathered in yet another circle for counsel. The plans he laid out for the gold he would gain from Talith's ransom included scholars and books. Children would have learning, and their parents, new stock to breed surefooted ponies. If the herdsmen could cover more territory, they could tend a much larger flock.

  'We'll have a post courier,' Arithon proposed, 'then a trade wharf downcoast from Ithish. No more city factors and brokers to skim off their cut from your wool yield.'

  At times acting as Arithon's secretary, his lines scratched out with a nib of the whippy, thin bone split
from a wyvern's wing leather, Dakar could not help but admire the method. War would come to Vastmark and claim the lives of young men, but their tribes would be compensated, the grinding poverty of nomadic existence eased over by permanent change and improvement.

  The bad years might cease to be remarked for their tragedies, the future set free from killing hardship. Babes would no longer grow stunted from malnourishment, nor lambs die from salt shortage, nor injuries mend badly for lack of sound treatment and healers. Dakar penned notations and pledges of agreement, unable to decide if the move stemmed from clemency or genius.

  'Your lowland pastures could support blooded horses,' Arithon suggested. Thrown into relief by the crawling flames of tallow dips scattered on the rugs in clay bowls, his shoulders mantled in coarse saffron wool, he qualified in detail. 'The drifters in Tysan breed the best stock. I've already sent letters of inquiry. Choice studs can be imported, and the knowledge of husbandry brought in.' He scarcely need add that an ongoing climate of war must increase the demand for fine destriers.

  The meeting broke up under starlight. When confronted by a snow-haired elder with sharp reservations, Arithon gave way to a moment of naked uncertainty. 'Your fears are all justified, grandmother. For the gains I have promised, the campaign must be won. No valley in Vastmark will be free from armed threat until Lysaer's warhost is vanquished.'

  'Our tribes could be scattered,' the beldame said, her reproof rasped through the scrapes of night insects, and her gaze upon Arithon as keen as Dharkaron's last judgment.

  Rathain's prince gave her truth, unflinching as rock, and strive as Dakar might, no flaw in the grain could be found in his masterbard's sincerity.

  'We could lose.' Arithon clasped the woman's withered fingers, his entreaty mingled with humility. 'If that comes to pass, I can promise I'll be dead. Not only your tribes in Vastmark will suffer. The peril behind this curse is the Mistwraith's latent threat, which I'm bound by blood oath to answer. I must make my stand somewhere. The mountains here are too formidable for outright conquest. Of all peoples, yours are most needful of change, and through hardihood, the likeliest to survive.'