Hamadrian Innadan reached for his wine and had a long gulp of it, nearly draining the glass. He set it down, the metal base of the goblet thunking heavily against the table. “You say that Lionel Delondeur is dead? Truly?”
“I do, my lord,” Cerisia replied.
“That news,” Baron Innadan said carefully, “does not find me in sorrow’s grip.”
“There is quite a tale to be made of all of it,” Cerisia offered.
“I am less interested in the tale than I am the truth of it.”
“And when a paladin walks the world, and other powers with him, the truth and the tale are hard to separate from one another.”
Arontis cleared his throat, and his father waved a hand at him. Stepping forward to stand behind Cerisia’s chair, he said, “If he has already pulled down one Baron, how do we know he isn’t calling for a congress in order to spring a trap?”
The Baron’s head rose sharply towards his son, narrowing his eyes in anger. “Arontis, think. Whatever he calls himself now, we’re talking about Allystaire Coldbourne. I called him bloodthirsty, and he was that—but he was never a murderer, nor was that kind of deceit in his heart. Or, in truth, in his mind. He was an honest man and straightforward. Never subtle.”
“He is even more and even less the things you say he once was, Baron Innadan,” Cerisia put in. “If I did not know that this peace conference was his true aim, I would never have agreed to carry this message on his behalf.”
That sharp blue eye flicked to her. She found it easy to focus on his bright eye, rather than the clouded one, but the Baron made that easier by turning his head so that only his good eye seemed to be focused on her. “That raises yet another question. Why does he not come himself?”
“He has immediate obligations in the village where the Temple of his Goddess has risen.”
“Hmm. And this Goddess, what of Her? Tell me. Do you come to me in service to Her?”
“I am still servant to the Mistress of Wealth, and I always shall be,” Cerisia replied. “Most of those who do worship with Allystaire call Her the Mother. Some the Lady. They claim the Sun for Her, among other things.”
“The Sun,” he muttered. “Be honest with me, Cerisia. Is this a revolt in the making? Are all the great folk to be pulled down and made examples? I know my time in this world grows short. That doesn’t mean I wish to end it strung out along the walls of my own home like so much red bunting.”
“I think that Allystaire fears such a thing as much as you do,” she replied. “He wants peace, Hamadrian. Not a revolt.”
“What he wants and what he’ll get once he starts putting weapons in the hands of peasants are two different things. Especially if they’ve got the taste for Baronial blood now that Lionel is dead.”
“Lionel had gone mad. I saw it with my own eyes. Hamadrian, he raised a small host on the edge of winter and besieged one of his own villages. Sorcerers in his employ raised abominations. He became one himself, wearing armor and carrying a blade crafted from the bones and the blood of his own men. Allystaire and his companions made an army out of a few score farmers, laborers, and craftsman, and they won. And then they went back to living as poor folk do in winter.”
“Hmph. And this daughter of Lionel’s that is Baroness now, how did that come about?”
“Allystaire let her live,” Cerisia said, resisting the urge to massage her temple, “after taking her captive at the conclusion of the battle.”
“Who paid her ransom, then?”
“No one, Hamadrian,” Cerisia said. “Do not think that such rules apply to Allystaire Stillbright. Doubtless, Landen is on her way to occupying her seat in the Dunes even now, ready to come to the congress in good faith.”
“I’ll believe a Delondeur wants peace when she’s the last so-named person alive,” the Baron Innadan spat, then was suddenly seized with a choking cough. Cerisia stood up, moving towards him, but he held up a hand in protest even as his face reddened.
Arontis reacted quickly, pulling some small bottle from a side table and putting it to his father’s lips. Hamadrian snatched it in one hand and took a quick sip.
The coughing subsided quickly, but Cerisia took the opportunity to stand.
“Perhaps, my Lord Baron, we should meet again later,” she started, but he waved her down and she sank back into her seat.
“A bit of coughing’ll not deter me from seeing to business, Cerisia,” he said, his voice a bit ragged, cheeks still red beneath grey stubble. “If what you say is true, this is the most important moment of our age. I’ll not be deterred from attending to it.” He cleared his throat. Arontis hovered over his shoulder, but Hamadrian gave his son a gentle shove away.
“Barony Innadan will not sit idle if there is a chance at peace,” the Baron began.
“What gives us any reason to believe Harlach will lay aside its antipathy with us? Or that Delondeur has forgotten theirs simply because Lionel died? Or even that Oyrwyn has remembered our alliance?” Arontis spoke, unaddressed. His fair, smooth-cheeked face quivered with the tension of a rising anger. “If Lionel Delondeur is dead, the daughter will be weak. We could move forward against her with all haste.”
Hamadrian’s face grew cold, and slowly, the ailing man pushed himself to his feet. Cerisia found herself standing as well.
“Arontis,” the Baron began, his tone low, sad, not the barely-checked anger Cerisia had found herself expecting. “You were young when I called for a peace conference all those years ago, still a page, unblooded. You hadn’t seen the face of war, and you didn’t feel that faint hope that hung in the air. Mayhap I was the only one there who did, but the failure has haunted me. I’m too close to the Cold now to add any new regrets. So I ask you to think of our legacy, boy, as leaders of men. Answer me a question: which takes more courage, to lend a fallen enemy a hand back up, or to plant a boot on his neck?”
Arontis held his father’s gaze a moment, then dropped his eyes. Cerisia took a moment to appreciate the sweep of his eyelashes when he did, cataloguing it absently, saving most of her attention for the father.
“Just because you don’t like the answer doesn’t mean you don’t give it, boy.”
Arontis sighed, lifted his eyes. “To lift the man up.”
“Then that’s what we’re going to do,” Hamadrian said. “It shames us that it’s taken an Oyrwyn mountain savage to show us the way. Innadan ought to have led in peace. If we’re given a chance to now, then as long as I’m alive, we’re going to take it.”
Cerisia felt, for perhaps the first time, the seeds of hope sprouting into something more, growing upwards towards a light she couldn’t quite see, but sensed.
Baron Innadan turned to her then. “My scribes, birds, and post riders will be placed at your disposal, Archioness. We’ll get messages to whoever will listen, including Allystaire in his village. It can’t be a far ride, as you’ve gotten here so soon after snowmelt on the other side of the mountains.”
“In point of fact, Baron, there are facts about my passage here that you ought to know of.” She smiled faintly and said, “I hope you are prepared to credit things even more fantastic than those which I have already spoken of. Perhaps we ought to be seated again.”
CHAPTER 25
The Shape of Things
“First y’were sendin’ us away, be gone or be damned.” Ivar spat through one of several gaps in her teeth. “Then when we hie back, tails ‘tween our legs, chastened by your sister, who, forgivin’ me, can be a Cold of a lot more terrifyin’ than you, y’want us goin’ with that priestess. Now I’ll admit, a week or two spent shepherdin’ her o’er the mountains had a certain appeal, and Innadan at the end of a journey always does. But now,” the black-mailed warband captain said, “now ya’ve promised us t’this youngling Baroness Delondeur, the very one you were fightin’ when we first showed up. I don’t unnerstand ya.”
“
Conditions are fluid, Ivar,” Allystaire said, “and we must respond to them as we think best.”
Ivar watched Allystaire carefully, both of them armed and armored, horses nearby, watching the Delondeur men pack their gear, provisions, and arms on the few horses they had left.
“And I will not order you anywhere,” Allystaire went on. “To order you out of Thornhurst was a mistake, and I regret it; the sanctuary of the Mother’s Temple must always be open to anyone. I am asking you to consider helping to escort the Baroness Delondeur back to her seat, yes, for it is a long journey, and not one I can make with her.”
“Be quite a change, the Iron Ravens servin’ the Baroness Delondeur.”
“Change is what I am about.”
“We’ll take a vote, those of us who’re left. And in the end we’ll vote t’do as y’ask, no matter my words on it,” Ivar said. “But I want t’have a say before we go.”
“Have away.”
Ivar sniffed in one nostril. “Y’think y’can end a war that thousands been fightin’ for two score years with a few hundred villagers and yer Goddess, ya’ve gone daft. You might stop it fer a bit, get a pause fer yer peace congress, but war’ll come back. Way this part o’the world is.”
“That the task is difficult, perhaps impossible, does not for one moment change the fact that I must do it.”
“Yer makin’ too many enemies. Someone’ll slip a knife in yer back.”
“To get a knife into my back, Ivar, an assassin has to get past Idgen Marte.”
“Ya didn’t let me finish,” Ivar said. “They’ll slip a knife in yer back, or try, and if she carves up enough o’the bastards with knives, they’ll try t’find another way t’get at ya. You try and change the whole world, m’lord, the whole world’s gonna line up t’ask ya who the Cold y’think y’are. Together they’ll find a way. Come at the folk around ya, if they must. At the poor n’simple people you’re so concerned about defendin’.”
Allystaire breathed in deep through his nose and rested a hand on his hammer, still getting used to the rounded shape under his hand, rather than the flat top of the maul he was used to.
“Then I say let the whole world know that I am the Arm of the Mother, and that if they wish to draw me out in the way you describe, they will not be ready for what I bring with me.”
“Can’t fight entire Baronies by yerself, nor all o’Braech’s Temple, if it comes to it, or Fortune’s.”
“Ivar, why the concern?”
“Well, besides the fact that yer lookin’ t’drastically reduce m’company’s chances o’making good weight in the comin’ years? All that’s happened,” she shrugged, “I still don’t want t’see ya dead for bein’ foolish.”
“I do not think I was ordained a paladin so that I could live safely to my dotage, Ivar.”
The mercenary captain sighed and lowered her head a bit. “Just be smart, m’lord.”
“I am trying to be,” Allystaire said. “That is why I am asking you to go with the Baroness. I need a friend on that journey, Ivar, because much depends upon Landen taking up her seat. I know you do not agree with me on ending the war, and that you have not come to the Mother. I would like to think despite all the missteps we both have made, though, we could still call one another that.”
“I s’pose,” Ivar muttered grudgingly. “If ya really wanted t’be smart, why not have yer lad just magick us all there.”
“Too much for him. He has not returned yet from carrying Cerisia.”
“Ya don’t sound worried.”
“Because I am not,” Allystaire said. “If I concentrate, I can feel him. Far away, yes; hundreds of miles beyond Standing Guard Pass, even, within the shadow of the Vineyards. Yet he is well, and unworried, and will return soon.”
“That ain’t canny,” Ivar murmured, spat again, while making a useless warding sign with one hand against her leg and trying to hide it. “The payment her ladyship made to us still ain’t been earned, and if there’s one thing I’ll Cold well hold true with e’en as y’pull the rest o’the world I know down around me, it’s that I’ll earn my weight when my word is given fer it. We’ll go along with this little caravan, and we’ll get the Baroness Delondeur safe to her saltwater keep, but after that I promise nothin’. Place could be crawlin’ with assassins or pretenders or lords who’re takin’ their chance, and there ain’t much I can do about all o’that.”
“I would ask no more of you, Ivar. It is already more than I deserve.” Allystaire extended his hand and she took it, started to speak but held back, cutting off the words as they formed.
The captain of the Iron Ravens hauled herself into her saddle and whistled, then yelled, “Ravens. Let’s scout along the road. Hup.”
The remaining swords-at-hire had broken down their camp and packed their gear with remarkable efficiency. Pack mules laden with tents and other equipment were strung together on a lead behind Rohrich’s wagon in a trice, while the handful of black-mailed soldiers moved out on the small, reliable Oyrwyn horses that carried them from one battlefield to another, but rarely within battle itself. Allystaire watched them ride off, then retrieved a sack from his own saddle and walked to where Rohrich and his guard were loading the last of their pile of boxes and baskets.
“Myron?” Allystaire caught the attention of the guard and handed him the sack, stoutly tied about the neck with thick rope. “I am as good as my word. Once you are out of the village, open the sack however you like and retrieve your crossbow.”
The guard nodded, took the bag and started to tug at the rope.
“I said outside the walls,” Allystaire repeated.
The thick-necked guard tossed the sack in the wagon and gave Allystaire his best hard stare, thick brows knitting together over his dark, deep-set eyes. “Don’t seem fair.”
“Alas, friend Myron, things rarely are,” Allystaire replied dryly. He held the guardsman’s eyes, letting his mouth fall into a flat line, letting his eyes go cold.
“What’s t’stop me diggin’ it out as I please?”
“Myron. Do you think that the hard man act that works on roadside bandits, drunken townsmen, and the occasional surly greenhat is going to work on me?”
Rohrich had stopped to watch, an empty wicker basket in one hand. He came and stood between the paladin and the guard, putting a hand on Myron’s chest and shoving him. “You’ve got work t’be about and if the wagon isn’t rollin’ in half a turn with the wheels greased, I’ll keep half of your silver today.”
The man stomped off with an angry backwards look, and the peddler turned towards Allystaire, shrugging apologetically.
“Sorry, m’lord,” Rohrich said. “I don’t keep him around for his social graces. Your village has done right by us, though, and my wagons will be rolling back this way before summer.”
“It is all right,” Allystaire said. “I am familiar with that urge to know who the hardest man in the room is. A year ago, mayhap even a few months, he would be picking up his teeth right now. But if I want the rest of the Baronies to overcome those urges, I must do so as well.”
“You’re so confident you’re the harder man, then?”
“No,” Allystaire said, but then he raised one gauntleted fist, “just the one wearing steel.” Then, something Rohrich had said struck him. “Wagons?”
“Aye,” the peddler said, nodding. “Between the profit I got from you for the books and what I got from the good master alchemist for my entire stock of herbs and simples I can see about expanding a bit, as it were. Hire or buy a new team, second wagon, men to run it.”
“Glad to be of help, then,” Allystaire said. “If you bring more books here, I will buy them.”
Rohrich extended his hand, which Allystaire shook, and then the merchant was off, adjusting the contents of his wagon, yelling at Myron and his other hired man.
Allystaire let out a low whistle and Arde
nt trotted over to his shoulder, tossed his mane, and whinnied lightly. With the horse pacing beside him, he made his way over to the column of Delondeur men preparing to move out with Rohrich, and they parted for him until he met with Landen and Chaddin, both armed and mounted. He walked alongside Ardent, the horse going still as soon as it sensed his intent. One armored boot into the stirrups, he swung up, and said, “Baroness. Lord Magistrate. Allow me to ride a bit with you.”
* * *
Perhaps a turn later, out along the western road out of Thornhurst, Allystaire pulled up, turned to face the Baroness and her half-brother.
“I said it once before, but it bears repeating. Your father became a monster. I believe both of you understand that, but power changes a man, and often he ends up wanting more. The price of a father’s sin ought not to be repaid by the child, but if I hear word that either of you begin to repeat his mistakes, I will let Gideon shove the Dunes into the sea with you in it. Am I understood?”
They both nodded, their features serious under mail coif and iron cap.
“You know there’s a chance that some other lord has seized power in my absence,” Landen said.
“I do. But I have given you all the aid that I can. My hope is that a promise of peace, the new order of law, and you and Chaddin coming forward together will get the people behind you. That none of your major lords came forward to support your father could mean that they believed he was weak, or that they knew he had gone mad. My hope is for the latter, but if it is the former, you will have to move quickly.”
“I suppose there is always a chance one of my brothers could show up,” Landen said. “But then, they are likely dead.”
“Odd way to choose a Baron,” Allystaire remarked.
“It has worked for the Delondeurs for more than ten score years,” Landen said. “The strongest and smartest come back having learned something of the world and themselves. I am probably a better mariner than any Delondeur in generations, for instance.”
Crusade Page 33
