Arontis was silent a moment. “Father, what of this Mother’s Temple? The Goddess who has lifted up this paladin.”
“What about it? Not much of a Temple yet, as far as I understand.”
“What if we invited them to make a chapel here?”
“Why would we do that?”
“To hear Cerisia tell it, Braech is likely to be an enemy of any peace congress. Fortune will work for it, if not wholeheartedly. The Mother, though?”
“Is worshipped by a few score farmers and tradesmen, and one exiled nobleman.”
“And his companions. She will not say much of them, but she seems to think there are those more powerful than the paladin himself. And then there are his knights.”
“Oh, he has knights now, does he?” Baron Innadan shook his head, muttering. “Making knights out of peasants. The White Bear will be thrilled to hear that.”
“And yet he defeated Baron Lionel Delondeur,” Arontis said. “Something we could never do, not even when working with Gerard Oyrwyn.”
Hamadrian thought on that a moment. Lionel had indeed been a fierce figure, performer of daring deeds in his youth, the captain who beat the Islandmen back even after they’d conquered Vyndamere and cut Varshyne off. “No small feat, I admit,” the Baron finally said. “Still, it doesn’t recommend itself as a reason to endorse a new faith. Kill a Baron, earn a chapel in the Vineyards? Sets a bad precedent, my boy. Very grim.”
Arontis sighed and folded himself into one of the other chairs, set his hands on his knees. Hamadrian peeked a look at his son. More of his mother in him than me, he thought, looking at the large brown eyes under their long lashes, the finely-cut cheekbones. And better luck to him for it. He could see, could sense the boy struggling with something. It fell into place in his mind.
“Arontis, no,” the Baron said.
“Father, I haven’t even said anything.”
“Listen to me, boy. You want to run off and join this paladin’s knights. I can read it in your face plain as the sunrise. It isn’t possible. Out of the question.”
Arontis lifted his head. “It might be a chance to do something truly great.”
“You’ll have that chance as Baron. More of it.” Age and illness had chipped away at Hamadrian Innadan’s presence and his voice, but if he’d once known how to make it crack like a whip, he knew now how to draw the words out so as to discourage dissent.
His son was silent a moment. “You have grandchildren.”
“Enough!” The Baron’s voice rattled in his chest as he raised it, sitting as straight in his chair as he could manage. “I have but one son remaining to me. As luck would have it for me, for your people and home, you are the best of them. Ethrin was a good hand with a sword, but an idiot, and he died for it at Aldacren. Dessen, gods love him, wasn’t born with the strength to live enough winters to know much of what he could’ve been.”
Hamadrian Innadan’s voice flagged a bit. He paused to swallow, to press the back of a hand to his mouth. “No man should be able to name two dead sons,” he muttered. “And too many can.”
The Baron blinked a few times, and turned his eyes, one clear, one milky, towards his remaining son. “It is true that I have grandchildren. But none of them, Arontis Innadan, are you.” He took another deep breath. “I will not stop you from playing a man’s part in what’s to come. But neither will I allow you to throw aside all the good you could do in my seat for a moment’s boyish impulse. I will hear no more of it. That is my command as your father and your Baron. Am I understood?”
“Yes, m’lord,” Arontis said. Hamadrian could hear how half-hearted the reply was, how unconvinced his son remained.
“The lives of thousands could depend on an Innadan occupying the Vineyards, Arontis. Thousands. You can do more with a circlet and a proclamation than you’ll ever do with a sword.”
Arontis nodded and stood to go, leaving his eyes lowered, asking permission to leave. The Baron waved a hand in assent. His son paused just before the door.
“It was neither circlet nor proclamation that ended Lionel Delondeur,” he murmured quietly, then slipped out the door.
Hamadrian let him go, sank into his chair, folded his hands together in his lap to keep them from trembling. They shook anyway.
CHAPTER 28
A Fight Before the Dunes
“The winter appears to have done us a favor.” Landen offered this observation to Chaddin as they rode at the head of their small column through the nearly empty streets of Londray.
There’d been no problem with the guards at the outer or the inner gate. Of the four guards to examine them, one had taken in the pair of them riding together and hurriedly raised the gate, one had simply bowed at sight of the ring on Landen’s finger, a third had peered long but surreptitiously at the resemblance in the cut of their jawlines, and the fourth had run off ahead of them, swinging a handbell and yelling, “The Baroness returns! The Baroness Landen Delondeur returns!”
“What do you mean?”
The streets were empty, and though it was early, they were too empty. No prentice boys were running errands or beginning their morning tasks. Bakeries and inns they passed were not pouring the smoke of oven fires from their chimneys.
“The folk are expecting a fight. Strife in the streets. A scramble for the Dunes and the seat. The winter kept it at bay for this long,” Landen said. “With each day that passes, they grow more wary, hide inside their homes, ignore their trades. Probably hoarding food.”
Chaddin sighed heavily. “What can we do?”
“Pray that we’ve gotten here fast enough and that our letters will buy us time.”
When they passed a cross street where the signs were carved with the image of a shallow bowl, Landen called forward two of the knights that had ridden with them back from Thornhurst and turned to dig into a saddlebag. Chaddin looked at the armored men a moment, and leaned towards his half-sister, murmuring, “Send the warband men.” He dropped his voice to an even lower whisper. “They’ll not go looking for any other friends.”
Landen thought a moment, nodded. To the two knights, she said, “Ride ahead to the Dunes, then back, quick as you can manage.” They spurred off, and after a moment, Landen brought forward the letters she’d been digging for. She pulled free a rolled-up parchment tied with white silk and sealed with white wax with the impression of Fortune’s wheel. “Ivar.”
The remaining men of the Iron Ravens filed along behind their gap-toothed captain as she approached Landen. Before coming within sight of the walls, Landen had talked Ivar into striking their banner, but their black mail still stood out, as did their horses. The short, shaggy ponies they rode were far more common in Oyrwyn or Harlach than Delondeur.
Landen held out the scroll to the warband captain, who took it in a black-gloved hand. As it moved, a tiny remnant of the perfume worn by the woman who’d written and sealed it wafted into the air.
“Y’sure the Arch’oness isn’t damnin’ ya w’this?” Ivar raised the scroll doubtfully.
“As sure as I can be, not having broken her seal,” Landen said. “I expect it to arrive at Fortune’s Temple intact.”
“Aye.” The mercenary started to turn her horse.
“Captain,” Chaddin suddenly said, “there’s a silver link for your company for every additional armed man accompanying you to meet us at the Dunes.”
Ivar saluted with the scroll, her smile offering brown teeth where it had any at all, and her men and their ponies shuffled off into the drawn gloom.
“Where are you getting those links, brother?” Landen looked towards Chaddin with an arched blonde eyebrow.
“I assume the office of the Lord Magistrate will have an official purse,” Chaddin replied calmly. “And the best way to keep the streets free of blood is to have more armed men behind us than in front of us.”
“I can’t fault yo
ur logic,” Landen said, “and I suppose you will need funds. Yet you have probably just spent them all.”
“How many men can Ivar possibly round up?” Chaddin shrugged and set his horse moving.
* * *
The answer, as it turned out, was the entire available guard of Fortune’s Temple: three score men in white surcoats, spiked bronze helmets, and matching enameled mail. They marched in ranks, gleaming dully in the early morning light.
Landen and Chaddin watched them with critical eyes and turned to each other. “Their lines are ragged,” Chaddin pointed out. “Bad at marching, bad at fighting.”
“We don’t want them to have to fight,” Landen said.
“I’ll wager half of them don’t know more than what end of the sword to hold.”
As the guards came to a slow stop, with many collisions in the ranks, Ivar came riding to their head, smiling widely and crookedly. “That’s if ya have anything left t’wager with, m’lord,” the mercenary captain drawled. “I’ll happily take payment in gold links if ya’ve not enough silver.”
“We have a castle to occupy first,” Chaddin pointed out. “But I will give you a down payment now.” He turned in the saddle and started to dig in a saddlebag, but Ivar waved him off.
“We can work it out later,” she said, then that ugly smile widened even further. “W’reas’n’ble interest, o’course.” The black-mailed woman on the shaggy little horse guffawed at her own wit, then spat on the cobbles and rode back towards the Temple Guards, eyeing them disapprovingly.
One of the guardsmen approached the mounted half-siblings and bowed. He carried no spear and his surcoat bore a wheel embroidered in silver thread. “Guard Captain Sanglais,” he said in a mellifluous accent. “I am bid by Archioness Cerisia to place my entire detachment in your hands, Lady Baroness, and Lord Magistrate,” he added, sketching a second bow, and then a third—slightly smaller than the first two—to Landen and Chaddin in turn.
“Thank you, Captain,” Landen said. She tilted her head. “Keersvasti?”
“Aye, m’lady Baroness,” the man replied. “I understand you spent some time among the jeweled islands last summer.”
“Aye,” Landen replied. Pursing her lips a moment, she spoke again in a more lyrical tongue. Chaddin and the rest of the men around him turned quizzical eyes on her. “I spent most of my time chasing Keersvasti pirates,” she said in his language carefully, slowly, “and less among jeweled isles.”
Sanglais chuckled lightly and laid a hand against his chest as if lightly wounded. “Any man who violates the sanctity of the sea is no true son of the archipelago.”
“There are many islands on all that water,” Landen replied. “Not all are as a string of emeralds. Some are merely rock, and full of places for a pirate to hide.”
“That may be, but when they come near the archipelago, my lady, we kill them,” Sanglais replied. “Pirates would clutter our very lifesblood and see us slowly die.”
Chaddin cleared his throat, and Landen lifted a hand to him in apology, switching back to the Barony tongue. “I am sorry, Lord Magistrate. We must cease being rude, captain—and we have business to attend to.”
“That we do, m’lady Baroness. To the Dunes, I assume?” When Landen nodded, Sanglais bowed once more and returned to his troops, calling out orders to them. They lurched forward unevenly, a few men butting into the ranks in front of him.
There was no need to give directions. The tall, sand-colored walls loomed over the city in its extreme northwest corner. They reflected the light of the rising sun like a beacon mirror guiding ships to shore in darkness or mist, and Landen felt keenly their pull.
By now folk had started to tail along after the mounted train, and whispers scurried along the lanes and streets. Boys and young men, running the news ahead of them, found themselves getting yanked indoors by prudent parents or cautious wives. Many a door-bar could be heard falling, many shutters drawn tight, and yet a crowd still drew alongside them.
A few cheered raggedly, and Landen felt the pressure growing, a spot in the center of her back that expanded until it became a weight upon her shoulders and the back of her neck. What, she thought, would my father have done?
Talked them all into taking up arms and marching ahead of him. Even as the thought formed she saw the cold, easily-angered face of Allystaire Stillbright swim in her vision.
She called a halt and stood in her stirrups, cleared her throat. “Good people of Londray. I hope that this day is as bloodless as Snow’s Melt or a Harvest Fest.”
Silence. A lot of stares that weighed her carefully. Her horse whinnied quietly, stomped at the cobbles.
“However,” she went on, “if blood is to be spilled, let it be our blood. Go to your homes. Pray that we can put the winter behind us in peace and plenty. My brother and I have buried any enmity that was between us, and there will no longer be factions plotting in their halls and then fighting in your streets. Please,” she added, raising her hands up, palms out. “Please go to your homes. See to the safety of yourselves, your children, your trades.”
Landen sighed as she sat back into the saddle. Perhaps half the crowd, dozens of folk that had gathered by then, dispersed back into the streets. The rest milled around. When Landen swung her small and motley column back into motion, they followed, though at a distance.
The Baroness sighed, which her brother heard. “We can’t all inspire them to defeat armies like he can, Landen,” Chaddin murmured.
“I’d settle for them doing as I asked and heading for safety. No matter what happens, Londray will need them safe and working, fishing, trading, selling, smithing.”
“What is it you expect to happen? Another brother? Ennithstide or Lamaliere to have taken the Dunes and named himself Baron?”
“It is not about what I expect,” Landen said, “it is about what can happen.”
They rode on in silence, but didn’t need to wait long, for the pair of riders Landen had sent ahead came thundering back. They pulled their mounts up dramatically; one threw sparks from a cobble with its shoes.
“My lady Baroness,” one reported loudly, “there are no banners flying above the Dunes save that of the Barony itself. There are men drawn across our path, though. Armed, but only a score.”
“They’re under Braech’s banner,” said the other. “Led by a priest, a young man I don’t recognize. Not the Choiron nor the Marynth of Londray’s Temple.” The man cleared his throat, looked as if he had more to say.
“Go on, Urbin,” Landen urged him. “I would have a full report, and truthful, always.”
“Very well, m’lady. Among them, flanking the priest? There’s two men not wearing armor, aside from gauntlets. Bare from the waist.”
Landen suppressed a shiver by tightening her hands around the reins of her horse. “Was their skin marked?”
“Aye.”
There was silence save for the sound of horse’s hooves shuffling on the stone-lined streets, of the clank of gear and creaking sway of harness.
Chaddin looked from his sister to the reporting knight, frowning. “What? An unarmored man is a fool, and we have them three to one if they mean to force a fight.”
“An unarmored man is a fool,” Landen agreed, “but sometimes a fool is the most dangerous kind of man to fight. Have we any bows?” She looked back over his shoulder at their ragged train, but the hope in her words was futile; in her sinking gut she knew the truth. “Cold,” she cursed quietly as he saw only their horsemen, with their swords, their horseman’s axes, or flails dangling from wrists. Behind them, Sanglais’s gleaming ranks of bronze and white carried short, stabbing spears and swords. Not a bow or a crossbow in evidence.
“What is it?” said Chaddin. “Will twenty stand and fight sixty?”
“How many men did Allystaire Stillbright have to stand and face three hundred, because he had the will of a Godde
ss behind him? If the rest of the Islandmen abandon them, which I doubt, the two that Urbin saw would stand and fight if we were six hundred. I have seen them, in the islands, in Keersvast. Urbin,” she said, “ride back to the Captain of Fortune’s Temple guards and tell him to prepare his men to face a pair of Dragon Scale Berzerkers.”
* * *
Landen and Chaddin rode to the fore, spreading the horsemen out in a thin line, flying the Tower of Delondeur in their midst. Ivar and the Ravens had dismounted, mingling with Sanglais’s men in hope of stiffening them. While the walls of the Dunes gleaming promisingly, a thin line of men blocked the approach to the main gate.
The men barring their path looked huge, leaning on the gigantic axes and massive, broad swords Islandmen favored. Armor was mismatched or barely visible beneath the their furs, bristling to match the long braids they wore in hair and beard. A blue-robed priest stood in their midst, the berzerkers flanking him.
All eyes were drawn to them. Even among so many grim, hard-looking men, they seemed composed of violence, ready to unleash it like a part of themselves.
At a long distance, Landen stood in her stirrups and called out. “Men of the Sea Dragon! Why do you block the path of the Baroness Landen Delondeur and her brother, Lord Magistrate Chaddin?” Landen had decided it couldn’t hurt to trumpet that last bit as often as possible in case any former mutineers were in shouting distance.
The blue-robed priest, who seemed tall and yet somehow insubstantial next to the bare-chested men flanking him, had started to speak, but one of the Dragon Scales threw his head back and roared.
Even from dozens of yards away, the sound boxed Landen’s ears like a pair of closed fists. It hurt to hear it; it was unearthly and it echoed off the buildings that lined the street.
A pair of horses panicked, screaming and rearing up. One threw its rider and bolted. Some of Sanglais’s men started to back away. A few were quickly struck back into line by the butt-end of a black-clad Raven’s spear, but a handful turned and ran.
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