Borenson followed his weapon, the full weight of his shield slamming against the big knight. Both of them bowled over the back of the knight's horse, landed in the ash.
Such fierce blows would have killed a normal man, but Raj Ahten's blood-crazed Invincible shouted a war cry, and shoved Borenson back downhill a few yards.
The Invincible leapt to his feet, drew his mace. Gaborn wondered if the knight would live up to his name, for he seemed invincible. Some of these knights had over twenty endowments of stamina, could recover from nearly any blow.
The Invincible rushed forward, a blur. Borenson lay on his back. He kicked, slamming an iron boot into the knight's ankle. A bone snapped like the cracking of an axle.
The Invincible swung his mace. Borenson tried to block the blow with the edge of his shield. The shield crumpled under the impact, and the lower edge of it drove into Borenson's gut.
Borenson groaned beneath the blow.
Gaborn had nearly reached the battle, his own horse flying back uphill.
Gaborn leapt from his horse's back. The Invincible whirled to meet him. The big man swung his mace high, ready to smash Gaborn under its iron spikes.
The Invincible's full helm allowed no peripheral vision, so he could not see Gaborn till he turned. As he spun, Gaborn aimed his sword at the eye slits in the man's visor.
The blade slid in with a sickening thud, and Gaborn let himself fall forward, knocking the knight backward, piercing his skull.
He landed atop the armored knight, lay a moment, the breath knocked from him. Gasping. He looked the Invincible in the face, to be sure he was dead.
The fine blade had driven through the eye slit up to the hilt, driven through the Invincible's skull, then punctured through the back of his helm. Even an Invincible could not survive such a devastating wound. This one had gone as limp as a jellyfish.
Gaborn got up in shock, conscious of how close he'd come to death.
He quickly assessed himself, checking for wounds, glanced uphill, afraid another knight might charge down.
He tried to yank his short sword free of the Invincible's helm. The blade would not come loose.
Gaborn climbed to his hands and knees, gazed at Borenson, panting. Borenson rolled to his stomach, began vomiting onto the charred earth.
"Well met, my friend," Gaborn said, smiling. He felt as if it were the first time he'd smiled in weeks, though he'd left Borenson only two days past.
Borenson spat on the ground, clearing his mouth, and smiled at Gaborn.
"I really think you should get your butt out of here before Raj Ahten comes down the road."
"Good to see you, too," Gaborn said.
"I mean it," Borenson grumbled. "He'll not let you go so easily. Don't you realize that he came all this way just to destroy House Orden?"
* * *
Chapter 21
FAREWELL
In the Dedicates" Keep, Chemoise grunted as she struggled to help her father from his bed of straw and dried lavender, dragged him out onto the green grass of the bailey so he could board the great wain for his trip back south. It was hard to move such a big man.
No, it was not his weight that made dragging him difficult. Instead it was the way he clutched her, grasping fiercely at her shoulders, his powerful fingers digging into her skin like claws, his legs unable to relax enough to walk.
She felt she had failed him years before, when she'd let him go south to fight Raj Ahten. She'd feared he would never return, that he'd be killed. She'd hoped her fear had been only a child's concerns. But now, after his years as a prisoner, Chemoise imagined she'd had a premonition, perhaps a cold certainty sent from her ancestors beyond the grave.
So now she carried not only her father, but also the weight of her failure all those years before, a weight that somehow tangled with her feelings of inadequacy at having found herself pregnant. Her, the Princess's Maid of Honor.
The western Great Hall in the Dedicates' Keep was huge, three stories tall, where fifteen hundred men slept on any given night. Smooth walnut planks covered the floors, and each wall held a huge hearth so the room could be kept comfortably warm all winter.
The eastern Great Hall, on the far side of the bailey, held a third as many women.
"Where...?" Chemoise's father asked as she dragged him past the rows of pallets where Dedicates lay.
"South, to Longmont, I think," Chemoise said. "Raj Ahten has ordered you to be brought."
"South," her father whispered a worried acknowledgment.
Chemoise struggled to drag her father past a man who'd soiled his bed. If she'd had time, she'd have cared for the fellow. But the wain would leave any moment, and she couldn't risk being separated from her father. "You...come?" her father asked.
"Of course," Chemoise said. She could not really promise such a thing. She could only throw herself on the mercy of Raj Ahten's men, hope they'd let her care for her father. They'd allow it, she told herself. Dedicates needed caretakers.
"No!" her father grumbled. He quit trying to walk, suddenly let his feet drag, making her stagger to one side. She bore the weight, tried to carry him against his will.
"Let die!" he whispered fiercely. "Feed...feed poison. Make sick. We die."
It worried her how he pleaded. Killing himself was the only way he could strike back at Raj Ahten. Yet Chemoise could not bear the thought of killing any of these men, even though she knew that life for them would be horrible, chained to some dirty floor. She had to hope that her father would return someday, whole, undefiled.
Chemoise hugged her father, bore him through the big oak door, into the light. The fresh wind carried the smell of rain. Everywhere, Raj Ahten's troops rushed to and fro, seeking the King's treasury and armory above the kitchens. She heard glass break down the street, the cries of merchants.
She dragged her father to the huge, covered wain in the bailey. The sides and roof of the wain were made of thick oak planks, with only a thin grate to provide any light or fresh air. One of Raj Ahten's soldiers grabbed her father by the scruff of the neck, lifted him into the wain with no more care than if he were a sack of grain.
"Ah, de last," the soldier said in a thick Muyyatin accent.
"Yes," she said. The Raj's vectors were all in the wagon. The guard turned.
Chemoise glanced down the road through the portcullis gate, startled, Iome, King Sylvarresta, two Days, and Prince Orden were riding fine horses down Market Street toward the city gates.
She wanted to ride with them, or to shout a blessing to help them on their way.
She waited while the guard wrestled her father through the door. The wagon shifted with the movement. At the front of the wagon, some horsemen expertly began to back four heavy horses into their traces, hitching them to the axletree.
Chemoise climbed up the wagon steps, looked in. Fourteen Dedicates lay on straw inside the shadowed wagon. The place smelled fetid, of old sweat and urine that had worked into the floorboards and walls. Chemoise looked for a place to sit among the defeated men--the blind, the deaf, the idiots. At that moment, the guard was laying her father on the hay. He glanced over his shoulder at Chemoise.
"No! You no get!" the guard shouted, hurrying up to push her back from the wagon door.
"But--my father! My father is there!" Chemoise cried.
"No! You no come!" the guard said, pushing her.
Chemoise backed completely out the door of the great wagon, tried to find her footing on the ladder behind. The guard shoved her.
She fell hard to the packed dirt of the bailey.
"Ees military. For just military," the guard said, with a chopping motion of his hand.
"Wait!" Chemoise cried. "My father is in there!"
The guard stared impassively, as if a daughter's love for her father was a foreign concept.
The guard rested his hand on the hilt of the curved dagger in his belt. Chemoise knew there would be no reasoning, no mercy.
With a shout and a whistle, the driver of the h
uge wain urged the horses from the Dedicates' Keep. Guards ran before and behind the wagon.
Chemoise couldn't follow the wagon to Longmont. She knew she'd never see her father again.
* * *
Chapter 22
A HARD CHOICE
As Borenson smiled at Gaborn, watched the Prince suddenly reach the realization that Raj Ahten had come primarily to slay him and his father, a blackness came over Borenson's mind--a cloud of despair.
He saw King Sylvarresta, told himself, I am not death. I am not the destroyer.
He'd always tried to be a good soldier. Though he lived by the sword, he did not enjoy killing. He fought because he sought to protect others--to spare the lives of his friends, not to take the lives of his foes. Even his comrades-in-arms did not understand this. Though he smiled in battle, he smiled not in glee or from bloodlust. He did so because he'd learned long ago that the fey smile struck terror into the hearts of his opponents.
He had an assignment from his King: to kill the Dedicates of Raj Ahten, even though those Dedicates might he his lord's oldest and dearest friends, even if the Dedicate was the King's own son.
Borenson saw at a glance that King Sylvarresta had given his endowment. The idiot king no longer knew how to seat a horse. He leaned forward, eyes wide with fright, moaning incoherently, tied to the pommel of his saddle.
There, Borenson assumed, beside the King rode Iome or the Queen--he could not tell which--all the glamour leached from her, skin as rough as cracked leather. Unrecognizable.
I am not death, Borenson told himself, though he knew he'd have to bring death to these two. The thought sickened him.
I have feasted at that King's table, Borenson told himself, remembering past years when Orden took Hostenfest with Sylvarresta. The smells of roast pork and new wine and turnips had always been strong at the table--fresh bread with honey, oranges from Mystarria. Sylvarresta had always been generous with his wine, free with his jokes.
Had Borenson not thought the King too high above Borenson's own station, he'd have been proud to call him friend.
On the Isle of Thwynn, where Borenson was born, the code of hospitality was clear: to rob or kill someone who fed you was dastardly. Those who did so were afforded no mercy when slain. Borenson had once seen a man stoned near to death for merely affronting his host.
Borenson had ridden here hoping that he would not have to carry out his King's orders, hoping that the Dedicates' Keep would be so well guarded he'd never have a chance to gain entry, hoping that King Sylvarresta would have refused to grant an endowment to Raj Ahten.
Iome. Borenson recognized the Princess now, not from her features but from her graceful build. He remembered one late night, seven years past, when he'd been sitting in the King's Keep beside a roaring fire, drinking mulled wine, while Orden and Sylvarresta traded humorous tales of hunts long past. On that occasion, young Iome, wakened by the loud laughter beneath her room, had come to listen.
To Borenson's surprise, the Princess had come into the room and sat on his lap, where her feet could be near the fire. She had not sought out the King's lap, or that of one of the King's own guards. She'd chosen him, and just sat by the fire, gazing dreamily at his red beard. She'd been beautiful even as a child, and he'd felt protective, imagining that someday he might have a daughter so fine.
Now Borenson smiled at Gaborn, tried to hide his rage, his own self-loathing, at the duty he must perform. I am not death.
The dead enemy's warhorse had run downhill, stood now, ears back, regarding the situation calmly. Iome rode to it, whispered softly, and took its reins. The warhorse tried to nip her; Iome slapped its armored face, letting it know she was in command. She brought the horse to Borenson.
She sat rigidly as she drew near; her yellowed eyes filled with fear. She said, "Here, Sir Borenson."
Borenson didn't take the reins immediately. She was within striking range as she leaned near. Borenson could slap her with a mailed fist, break her neck without drawing a weapon. Yet here she stood, offering him a service, his host once again. He stood, unable to strike.
"You've done my people a great service this day," she said, "dislodging Raj Ahten from Castle Sylvarresta."
A thin hope rose in Borenson. It seemed barely possible that she did not serve as a vector for Raj Ahten, that she'd given her endowment only, and therefore did not pose a major threat to Mystarria. This would give him some reason to spare her.
Borenson took the horse's reins, heart pounding. The stallion did not fight or shy from his foreign armor. It whipped its plaited tail, knocking flies from its rump.
"Thank you, Princess," Borenson said with a heavy heart. I'm under orders to kill you, he wanted to say. I wish I'd never seen you. But he had to wonder at Gaborn's plan. Perhaps the Prince had a reason for bringing out the King and Iome, some reason Borenson didn't fathom.
"I heard more horns in the woods," Iome said. "Where are your men? I would like to thank them."
Borenson turned away, "They rode ahead an hour ago. We're alone here." It was not time to talk. He retrieved his weapons from his dead horse, strapped them to the enemy's warhorse, mounted up.
They raced through the blackened woods down to the road, then followed it, thundering over one burned hill after another until they nearly reached some living trees, with their promise of shelter.
By a burbling brook at the edge of the woods, Gaborn called a stop. Even a force horse with runes of power branded on its neck and breast needed to catch its wind and get a drink.
Besides, in the green grass at the edge of the stream lay a soldier of House Orden. A black noman's spear protruded through the soldier's bloody neck. A gruesome reminder that although the small group would soon enter the woods, they'd still be in danger.
True, Borenson and his men had hunted nomen all morning, had scattered this band. But nomen were crafty nocturnal hunters, and usually fought in small bands. So some bands would be here in the woods, hiding under the shadows, hunting.
Gaborn dismounted as the horses drank, checked the soldier's body. He flipped open the man's visor.
"Ah, poor Torin," Borenson grunted. He'd been a good soldier, had a fine talent with the morning star.
Torin wore the normal dress of a Mystarrian warrior, black ring mail over a sheepskin jerkin. A dark-blue surcoat over the mail bore the emblem of Mystarria, the green knight--a man's face with oak leaves in its hair and beard. Gaborn traced the outline of the green knight on Torin's surcoat.
"Beautiful colors," Gaborn whispered. "The most beautiful a man could wear." Gaborn began stripping Torin. "This is the second corpse I've had to rob today," Gaborn grumbled as if displeased at the prospect.
"So, milord, you'll bring a new dignity to the profession," Borenson said, not wanting to discuss the problem facing him. He eyed Iome, saw terror in her posture.
She knew what he had to do. Even she knew.
Yet Gaborn seemed oblivious. Was Gaborn mad? Or just immature? What made him think he could escape Raj Ahten with a woman and an idiot in his charge? Fine horses are nothing if you can't ride them--and obviously Sylvarresta could not ride.
"Where's my father?" Gaborn asked, stripping the corpse.
"Can't you guess?" Borenson said, unprepared for the question. "Right now, I'd say he's fifty miles from Longmont, hoping to reach it near dark. Raj Ahten has forty thousand forcibles there, buried among the turnips behind Bredsfor Manor. You know where the manor is?" Gaborn shook his head no.
"On the road three miles south of the castle," Borenson said, "a gray building with a lead roof and two wings. We intercepted a message from the Duchess Laren that says Raj Ahten expects an army to reach Longmont within a day or two. Your father hopes to beat them to the treasure."
"Raj Ahten knows this?" Gaborn asked, just as he got the ring mail untied from the body. "That's why he's abandoning Castle Sylvarresta? To reclaim the forcibles?"
Gaborn obviously thought this foolhardy. He angrily unstrapped the dead man's
jerkin. Borenson wondered what occupied the Prince's mind. Did he not see that Sylvarresta must be slain? What was the boy thinking? "Your father hoped to convince the Wolf Lord that Longmont was conquered days ago," Borenson explained, "and that he's been taking endowments day and night ever since."
"A desperate bluff," Gaborn said, inspecting the sheepskin jerkin, looking close to see if it harbored fleas or lice. But if Torin had suffered from fleas in life, they'd all hopped away as soon as the body cooled.
Gaborn put on the jerkin, pulled on the ring mail and the surcoat--all just a bit too large for him. A small shield lay by Torin's right hand--a target of wood, covered with a thin layer of brass, then painted dark blue. The lower edge of the shield was filed, so that if one slashed with that edge, it could slice a man's throat like a knife. Usually only a man with an endowment of metabolism kept such a small shield. Thrust quickly, it doubled as a weapon. Gaborn took the shield.
"What of Raj Ahten?" Borenson asked. "I can see that he is on the move, but will he go to Longmont?"
Gaborn said, "As Father hoped, he'll march within the hour."
Borenson nodded. The sun shone in his blue eyes; he smiled. It was not a smile of relief. It was a hard smile, his battle smile. "Tell me," Borenson half-whispered, "where are you taking them?" He nodded at Iome, her idiot father.
Gaborn said. "Longmont. I took the best horses in the King's stables. We can reach the castle by nightfall."
Perhaps, if your charges knew how to ride, Borenson wanted to say. Borenson licked his lips, whispered, "It's a long journey, and hard. Perhaps you'd best leave Sylvarresta here, milord." He spoke as if it were a friendly suggestion, tried to hide the hard edge to his voice.
"After all the trouble I went through to get them from Raj Ahten?" Gaborn asked.
"Don't play the fool with me," Borenson spoke, voice rising in anger. His face felt hot; his whole body coiled. "Sylvarresta has long been our friend, but now he serves the Wolf Lord. How many endowments of wit does Sylvarresta vector to Raj Ahten? How many endowments of glamour does the Princess vector?"
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