CHAPTER 56
The Mother’s Peace
The Barons, even Brazcek, had all agreed to travel together to Barony Innadan, bearing with them the body of Arontis Innadan, preserved by the arts of the Wit of the Mother.
It was said of him that if his time in the seat was brief, it was distinguished, and that it ended in a true peace.
But their stately progression found itself grinding to a halt when they came in sight of Standing Guard Pass to find its towers occupied by armed men, with the Oyrwyn Peak flying from their tops.
Gideon, Torvul, and Idgen Marte reined up outside of the Oyrwyn encampment. They had ridden a day or so ahead of the returning host, fearing just such impediments. Gideon had not scouted again, saying that he found himself too weak. Torvul carried copies of the agreement Gilrayan Oyrwyn had signed and sealed, and marshaled his arguments.
Idgen Marte carried her sword.
Gideon was quiet, as he had been so often since Varshyne, since the Dragon and Pinesward.
The pass was stuffed with soldiers. The banners of Naswyn and Harding flew in the camps.
“This,” Torvul said, “does not look promising.”
A small party rode out under drawn banners to meet them. Gilrayan Oyrwyn was not in evidence. The party was led by Joeglan Naswyn.
“What is going on, Lord Naswyn?” Idgen Marte kept her hand auspiciously distant from her sword’s hilt. “Where is the Baron?”
“The Baron will not be meeting you,” Naswyn said in his quiet and sober voice. “He does not intend to adhere to a treaty which was signed under the influence of witchery. Moreover,” he added, “you three are to be detained as hostages in order to secure the behavior of the other Baronies as we begin rooting out the traitors who sought to undercut Oyrwyn’s ability to make war.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We know you conspired to weaken us,” Naswyn rumbled. “You will be asked, and then compelled, to provide a list, so we may begin setting this right.”
“You mean war within your own borders,” Idgen Marte spat.
“For now, yes,” Naswyn said. “If opportunities beyond that present themselves, Baron Oyrwyn intends—.”
“I do not care what Baron Oyrwyn intends.” Gideon’s voice was cold and exasperated, and the boy trembled as he stared up at Joeglan through knitted brows. “I do not care what he wants. Where. Is. He.”
Idgen Marte had to fight not to take half a step away from the boy, while Torvul went to his side, murmuring words she did not catch.
“Do not be insolent with me, boy,” Joeglan said. “You will be well treated so long as you offer no resistance. But the Baron will not be seeing you until your weapons are surrendered.”
There was a blaze of golden light in Gideon’s eyes. He waved his hand, contemptuously, Idgen Marte thought.
Joeglan Naswyn flew backwards off his horse and landed ten paces away in a clatter of armor. His horse’s eyes rolled white and the animal ran wildly away.
The men around him, some wearing Horned Tower badges, some wearing their own knightly livery, began to draw their swords.
Light flared in Gideon’s eyes again. The swords flared so brightly that Idgen Marte shielded her eyes, and then the men and knights were flinging them to the dirt and grasping their scalded hands. She looked down; the blades were molten rivulets flash-burning the new grass.
“Naswyn isn’t dead,” the boy said, his voice rising, filling the space around him. “But someone will be if I am not given some answers. Where is Baron Oyrwyn?” He pointed to the tower from which the Oyrwyn Peak fluttered. “There?”
One of the knights, his shield painted with birds perching on barrels in blue and red, half-nodded.
“Thank you,” Gideon said, though the words rang hollow in a way that made Idgen Marte sweat. He turned towards the tower. He did not make a gesture, but the force of his concentration was nearly palpable.
The stone crenellations atop the tower exploded, one by one, pelting the men standing atop it with fragments of stone. Idgen Marte could hear them pinging off armor and shields, and a few strangled cries of pain.
“Gideon,” she yelled. Torvul echoed her. He ignored them.
“Gilrayan Oyrwyn,” he called out, “I will take that tower apart stone by stone until you show yourself. Starting now.”
The tower began to unravel. Stones fell away and crashed to the ground. Gideon showed no signs of strain; he barely gestured. Somehow, the wooden floors and ladders that made up the interior stayed in place. Men crept back from the edge, shouting in fear. One teetered, only to be pushed back to his comrades with a flick of Gideon’s finger.
Idgen Marte watched as the Oyrwyn delegation backed away. They mumbled fearfully, some making useless warding signs with their hands, until in ones and twos and then as a group, they broke and ran. She gave up on speaking aloud. Gideon, I’m not sure this is helping.
He didn’t answer. More rocks fell from the tower till it was a trembling stairway standing alone full of terrified men in grey tabards and armor.
“Allystaire died for you, Gilrayan Oyrwyn,” the boy said, and though he did not yell, his voice carried throughout the entire pass, reverberated off the mountains. “For all of you. And you would repay his death, and so many more, with treachery and war. With grasping and plotting, and thinking of ways to turn it to your advantage.”
The delegation before them broke and ran. Torvul and Idgen Marte shared a fearful look.
Gideon! This is not the way.
He turned towards her, his eyes featureless orbs of gold that shone against the dusky skin of his cheeks. “He will answer me, Idgen Marte.”
“Or what?” Torvul muttered, just loud enough for them to hear. “Or you’ll murder him and all his men in broad daylight?”
“Hundreds died to grant them peace. They would squander it, for what?”
“And how many of them would you kill in turn, boy?” Torvul’s voice was quiet, but Idgen Marte saw his hand creeping towards a potion-pouch.
“Do not try and stop me. I will not let you.” Gideon slid off the saddle but his feet did not touch the ground. Instead, he hovered a few inches from the mud. He flicked a finger, and a bubble of light of the same color as his eyes surrounded him. Torvul’s hand dropped feebly away from his pouch and he looked at Idgen Marte.
For the first time since she had known him, the dwarf seemed not only frightened, but out of ideas.
Gideon raised one arm and clenched his hand into a fist. “Gilrayan Oyrwyn. Answer. Me.” The hill the tower sat upon in order to command a broad view of the pass and plain below began to rumble and shake.
“Give me Gilrayan Oyrwyn and the rest of you will live.” Gideon’s voice rolled like thunder.
Idgen Marte wasted no more time on thinking. She acted.
The light emanating from Gideon’s eyes, and from the shield he’d erected, provided plenty of shadow next to him. A cloud passing near the sun gave her what she needed. She reached for her gifts and shifted, just a few feet, so that she was standing directly in front of him. Though he floated off the ground, she could look him directly in the eye.
What she found there terrified her more than all of the berzerkers, sorcerers, and Braechsworn she’d already faced.
Though the light in them was golden, it was of the same intensity and quality as the sorcerers she’d seen. The color radiated thinly through the skin of his cheeks, emphasizing how hollow they’d grown since Allystaire’s death. She clamped her arms onto his shoulders and forced him to look at her. She could feel power humming through his skin, the bones of his shoulders poking through the robe.
“Gideon, this is not loving the world. This is not what you said to the Eldest.”
“Allystaire died for them!” he shouted again. “He asked for nothing but peace. They have broken their own promises
.” The rumbling became a roar. The tower tottered. Men hung suspended in the air. “They don’t deserve peace.”
“And what would he want of you? We will enforce the peace, Gideon. But is this what Allystaire would want from you?”
Something in her words broke the cast of his face. The glow dimmed. His feet touched the ground. Gideon lifted his hands and the tower fell back into place. Stones fell from it, crashing into the spring mud below. A man fell through one of the gaps, his scream cut off as he stopped his descent mere inches from the ground, suspended in the air. Then he fell with a light thud.
The golden glow went out of Gideon’s eyes, leaving them a wide, deep brown once more. They were red-lined and wet, and he fell against Idgen Marte’s shoulder with a great wracking sob.
There was a rush of Oyrwyn men from the tower, precipitating an exodus of Oyrwyn forces from the pass. They ran, abandoning their camps and stores, cutting their horses free from picket lines in twos and threes, until it became a general rout.
Idgen Marte wanted to go amongst them, slipping into their shadows to search for Gilrayan, then haul him to account before the other Barons. But Gideon clung to her, sobbing until his throat was hoarse, and she would not let the boy go.
* * *
Before the Barons arrived, she found a large tent, with a garish knight’s livery sewn upon it, and led Gideon to the large cot inside, a featherbed upon it. He fell into it without a sound. She watched him until she was sure he was asleep, then turned to attend to her horse and her bags and Andus Carek and a thousand other, lesser things that would try to demand her attention.
Then Gideon’s voice, small and weak, came from the cot.
“Please don’t,” he said.
“Don’t what?”
“Leave.”
She turned and took a seat on a nearby folding stool. “I’ll be here when you wake,” she said. She reached out for Torvul with her mind. I need something, she began.
Already on my way.
* * *
Idgen Marte dozed, for how long she wasn’t sure. Gideon showed no signs of waking. Too much I need to be Freezing doing, she thought. Goddess knows what they’ll ice up out there without me.
But still she sat. She was never good at stillness, at being idle. So it wasn’t long before she snapped open the lute case Torvul had brought her, revealing the plain lute she’d bought Gideon and taught him with. She pulled it free, set it on her lap, and began tuning it idly. It had fallen woefully out of playing shape; there were no signs of recent use or care.
It wasn’t long before an idle strum of notes woke Gideon up.
“How long have I slept?”
She shrugged. “How long since you played this?”
“Since before the battles.”
She tsked. “A new hand has to keep at it. The skills aren’t ingrained yet. You’ll lose them if you aren’t careful.”
He said nothing as she continued to strum, watching her fingers. For a moment, the only sound in the tent was the notes she plucked out.
“He wanted me to be a better man. Than him.”
Idgen Marte lifted her head. “What?”
“You asked me what Allystaire wanted for me. That’s what he said. The last thing he said to me. That I would be a great man, but that I should try to be a good one. Better than him.”
His eyes glistened again as he spoke, but showed no signs of the earlier outpouring of tears.
“That’s why I stopped,” he went on. “When you asked…he would’ve been angry. He would’ve wanted to attack them, kill Gilrayan Oyrwyn. But he wouldn’t have wanted me to do it. Not like that. Not to all of them.”
“Probably not,” Idgen Marte agreed. She stood up and carried the lute to him, holding it out, giving it a shake until Gideon took it, awkwardly, as if he was no longer sure what to do with it.
“I’m not Allystaire,” she said. “I can’t try t’be a father to you. But you’ll have me around as…your sister or your aunt or whatever you care to call me. And Torvul, though he’ll never say it in so many words.”
Gideon nodded and settled the lute in his lap, setting his hands on the strings.
“I have things I have t’go see to now.”
“I know,” Gideon said. “I also know the question you want to ask.”
Idgen Marte felt a lump form in her throat.
“There wasn’t anything you could’ve done.”
Her hand clenched hard around her swordhilt as she nodded and left.
* * *
“I could challenge him directly,” Garth was saying as he stood at the head of an impromptu war council in the open air, enough light still in the sky to read each other’s faces, and the maps spread on the table. “I’ll not lay siege to Wind’s Jaw. That’s a fool’s game at best.”
Idgen Marte was Freezing well sick of looking at maps on tables, so she paced back and forth at a little remove, listening, not watching.
“Go back to your home,” Torvul said. “See that it is secure.”
“I can’t let him continue to gather men to him.”
“He’s got all the strength of the Barony already,” Idgen Marte said. “Challenging him might have some merit, but he’ll not answer you. He’s nothing to gain by accepting, and too much to lose.”
“She’s right,” Torvul advised. “He’ll simply be able to say you’re a traitor, unworthy of the honor, and have his archers fill you full of pinholes. Go home,” the dwarf repeated.
It took some doing, but Garth was reluctantly persuaded, and ordered his men to stand down but for an ordinary watch. The other Barons and Baronesses retreated singly and in pairs.
That night, Idgen Marte lay in her own tent—her own pavilion, insisted upon by Garth—with Andus Carek. The folding cot was in no way comfortable for two, so they’d spread the bedding and pillows upon the ground, and lay on them with their hands entwined, letting the spring breeze blow in through the lightly tied flaps. “It is better,” Idgen Marte said, “for one man to die than for armies to clash. This seems obvious,” she murmured.
“Marte,” he answered, “if I were you, I would have slit his throat weeks ago, back on the trail to Wind’s Jaw. That he still lives is testament to your patience and forbearance.”
“And Allystaire’s order,” she reminded him.
“Allystaire is dead,” Andus replied, sitting up on an elbow to look down at her. “I take no joy in saying it, but it remains the truth. Allystaire is dead, and you must carry on, and do as you think best. Sometimes you need a hammer, sometimes a siege engine. He was both. But sometimes you need a knife. That is you.”
She nodded and sat up. “He can’t have gotten far. I can catch him up if I push myself, and still catch up to this funeral procession at the Vineyards.”
“Take Torvul with you. I’ll watch Gideon while you’re gone. Teach him a new song.”
She tilted her head to one side, eyes widening. “You’d teach him? Without payment, without going to the Tower?”
“I’m never going back to the Tower if you aren’t,” Andus said, shrugging. “As for payment? There is the small matter of the Dragon, of everything he did during the war with the Braechsworn, the sorcerer.”
She shrugged and nodded, then stood, dressing quickly and slipping on her swordbelt.
Andus Carek hastily scribbled some notes, then took up his lute case. Once outside, all he had to do was follow the notes to where Gideon strummed his lute.
* * *
As it turned out, it wasn’t as easy to catch up to Gilrayan as Idgen Marte had thought. The Oyrwyn troops that surrounded him never camped for long, not even long enough for her to determine if he was traveling with them or not. Worse, they kept their short camps too brightly lit for enough shadows to appear for her to scout well.
She and Torvul were hard after them for two days,
the dwarf grumbling all the way, before the camp finally pulled up at a watchtower standing at the head of a trail. It was ordinary enough, but something about it seemed to give the fleeing men pause, as if it was a sign that they were well within their own strength, well away from the Will of the Mother and his power.
What’s more, Idgen Marte was close enough to their camp, hidden in thicket and fallen stones, to see Joeglyn Naswyn and an anonymous armored soldier heading inside.
“Oh, that little sack of shit,” Torvul grumbled as he peered along her line of sight with his glass. “That’s him. Look at the gambeson and the surcoat. Too richly embroidered, and with the Oyrwyn peak in silver thread, no less. He was hiding in plain sight all along.”
“Cold,” Idgen Marte swore. “One of the oldest tricks. Can’t believe he snuck it by us.”
“We’ve had a long spring,” the dwarf muttered. “Can you get us both inside?”
“Let’s wait till night falls.”
“Good,” the dwarf said. “I have some documents to draw up.”
* * *
The Oyrwyn men were lax that night. Torches were lit along the stairs of the tower, and fires outside, but they didn’t blanket the camp in lanterns as they had on the march. It was easy work for Idgen Marte to drag Torvul from shadow to shadow, the dwarf clinging to her arm and claiming dizziness whenever they stopped. Finally, she left him in one of the higher firing positions, not much more than a niche before an arrow-slit, and continued on. He’d come when she needed him; he had that knack.
She made straight for the top. She wasn’t sure why, but she did. And it wasn’t even in the rooms, but rather on the very top, that she found them.
Naswyn standing. Gilrayan, seated at a table, with heavy candlesticks, tapers burning in them, and a pile of papers.
“Going to be a clean sweep of Coldbourne and Highgate lords, more or less,” Gilrayan was saying. Arrayed on the table by the papers and candles were heavy silver knobs. Seals, she realized. And sticks of wax.
“And by the all the Gods who care to listen, I’m going to have that underhang on the walls here dug up, the flowers burned, and the grave emptied while I’m at it.”
Crusade Page 85
