“Actually, it was Rorin Mariner who thought of it.”
“Don’t do that!” the old man snapped.
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t ever refuse the credit for something people think is your doing. Damn it, boy, how do you think I got such a brilliant reputation?”
“I thought it was because you were brilliant, Charel,” Damin said, as he pushed the chair over the rough, unfinished flagstones of the long, chilly passage. “That’s what you’ve been telling me and Narvell since we were boys, anyway.”
“And you believed me!” Charel pointed out. “The fact is, I’m not responsible for half the things I’m credited with. But it suits me to let people think I am. My theory is this: if I’m smart enough to surround myself with clever people, why shouldn’t I take the credit for their successes?”
“What if one of these clever people you’ve surrounded yourself with does something really awful?”
“Then it’s even better,” Charel chuckled. “You get all the benefits of a reputation for being an evil bastard and none of the effort that goes into gaining it.”
“You’re a sneaky old rascal, Charel Hawksword,” Damin laughed as they reached the great hall.
As they approached the tall, carved doors, a slave pushed them open to allow them entrance. Since Charel had suffered a stroke three years ago, he’d been confined to the special wheeled chair he’d had built to help him get around. His right side was paralysed by the stroke and his speech was often slurred as he forced his words past his uncooperative lips, but only a fool mistook his painful enunciation as a sign of fading intelligence.
Tejay, Adham and Rorin were waiting for them, sitting at the end of a table just below the High Table where Charel conducted the formal business of his province. The massive beams of the ceiling that supported the vaulted roof were decked with the flags of every noble house in Elasapine. The effect was colourful, but did little to ease the oppressive solidity of the castle. Byamor was a fortress, older even than Krakandar. It lacked the grace and symmetry of Damin’s ancestral home. Neither had it ever benefited from the impeccable good taste of a mistress like Marla Wolfblade. The furniture was heavy and masculine and always reminded Damin of a well-appointed war-camp.
Adham and Rorin stood as they entered, bowing respectfully to the old Warlord as Damin parked the chair beside the bench where Tejay was sitting. Charel greeted the young men and then turned to Tejay with a crooked smile. “Lady Lionsclaw! I swear you grow lovelier with every passing year.”
“And your eyesight obviously gets worse,” she replied, leaning forward to kiss the old man’s cheek. “You’re looking very chipper, my lord.”
“And you claim my eyesight is failing?” he chuckled. “It’s good to see you again, Adham,” he remarked, turning his attention to his other guests. “How’s your father?”
“The plague in Greenharbour took him some time ago, my lord.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, lad. Ruxton Tirstone was a good man.” He turned his gaze on Rorin and examined him for a moment before nodding his approval. “Lord Wolfblade tells me good things about you, young Mariner.”
“I’m sure he exaggerates, my lord.”
“Then be grateful for it, lad. It’s not often one gets unasked-for praise and if he follows my advice, you won’t be getting it again.”
“Are you trying to corrupt our future High Prince, you old fox?” Tejay asked.
“I think if he was corruptible, Lernen would have managed it long before now, lass.” He glanced around the table and suddenly frowned. “Is this a dry argument? Bring wine!” he bellowed to nobody in particular. At the back of the hall a slave hurried to comply and moments later a tray with five goblets and a decanter of wine was sitting on the table in front of Tejay.
“You can pour,” he informed Tejay with another crooked smile.
Tejay did as he asked and placed the cup in his left hand. He was shaking as he raised it to his lips and a trickle of wine dribbled out of the paralysed right side of his mouth as he drank.
“Is Narvell not joining us?” Adham asked.
“I sent him out to keep an eye on the troops,” Charel said, wiping his mouth awkwardly on his sleeve. The army Damin had brought to Elasapine and the soldiers Narvell had with him on the border were camped some ten miles south of the city, both to protect the troops from plague in the city and the city from five thousand bored and lonely Raiders looking for entertainment. “The men needed somebody visibly in charge and with Warhaft on the warpath, I thought it might be prudent to keep my grandson and the lovely Kendra apart.”
“I’m going out to meet him later today,” Damin told them. “I’ll let him know what we’ve decided then.”
“What’s to decide?” the young trader asked. “Isn’t the point here to gather up every man in Hythria who can hold a sword and march him to the border to stop Hablet?”
“Put in its most simplistic terms, yes,” Charel agreed. “What we really need to consider, though, is how to deal with Hablet if he breaks through.”
“Do you think that’s possible, my lord?” Rorin asked.
“Anything’s possible.” The old man shrugged with his one good shoulder.
“It would help if we knew who was going to be leading his forces, too,” Damin said, thinking back to Zegarnald’s warning that the leader of the Fardohnyan forces was both intelligent and experienced. “Until we know that, there’s not much point in discussing tactics.”
“On the bright side,” the Warlord said, “you’ve got one thing going for you.”
“Youth and inexperience?” Damin joked.
“Exactly,” Charel agreed.
“How is that good?” Rorin asked.
“What Charel’s trying to say, Rory, is that if I do anything unusual, Hablet will probably assume it’s because I don’t know any better.”
“Which gives him more freedom of movement than any of you appreciate,” Charel told them.
“I don’t understand,” Rorin admitted, the least knowledgeable about warfare among them. “How does that help?”
“If I was leading this war, Rorin,” the Warlord explained, “Hablet and his generals would be studying every battle, every skirmish, every tavern brawl in which I’ve ever taken part, until they know my mind better than I do. There wouldn’t be a tactic I could try they wouldn’t anticipate. But they don’t know anything about Damin, other than he’s Lernen’s nephew. If our boy here is in command and he does anything out of the ordinary, Hablet is just as likely to assume his decisions are motivated by ignorance as anything else.”
“Which means we can lure the Fardohnyans into our trap,” Damin informed his companions smugly.
“If only we had one,” Adham added.
Tejay shook her head in disagreement. “There’s no need for a trap. We can keep the Fardohnyans bottled up in the passes indefinitely.”
“Maybe,” Charel conceded. “But even with Elasapine and Krakandar troops to aid you, Lady Lionsclaw, how long can Sunrise keep it up?”
“All of Hythria will come to Sunrise’s aid if Hablet attacks us,” Tejay declared confidently.
“They may not, my lady,” Rorin warned thoughtfully. “If they believe, as you do, that the Fardohnyans can be held off indefinitely in the mountain passes, they may be willing to play a ‘wait and see’ game.”
“The lad’s right, I fear,” Charel agreed. “The only way to guarantee all the Warlords come to Sunrise’s aid may be to actually suffer the invasion.”
“That’s a huge gamble,” Adham remarked.
Damin couldn’t help but agree, appalled at the very idea of allowing Hablet past their first and most effective line of defence just to get Hythria’s Warlords off their collective backsides. He nodded grimly. “Well, the plan has one advantage. Letting him past Winternest without a fight should go a long way to convincing Hablet I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Just remember,” Charel reminded them. “Superior weapons,
superior numbers, even superior generals count for less and less the closer the troops get to each other.”
“Then we bring the fight to Hablet,” Damin said. “We make him take Hythria one step at a time. One man at a time.”
“But first we have to close the passes,” Adham sug- gested.
Damin shook his head. “No. First we need to know what we’re facing. That doesn’t require a battle. It requires intelligence.”
“A foray into the Widowmaker?” Adham asked with a hopeful grin.
“And the Highcastle Pass. Hablet won’t make the mistake of attacking on only one front. If he’s serious about this he’ll attack through both passes simultaneously.”
“Toss you for it,” Adham said, pulling a copper rivet from his pocket. “Heads I take Highcastle, tails, the Widowmaker.” The coin spun in midair before Adham caught it and held it out for the others to see. “Tails,” he told them. “Looks like I’m heading for Winternest.”
“And poor Damin gets to visit his dear old cousin Braun, the Lord of Highcastle,” Tejay said sympathetically.
Damin grimaced at the thought. Braun Branador was an idiot. “We’ll see you safely to Cabradell first, my lady. I want to speak to Terin, in any case. He should have some idea of what’s happening on the other side of his borders.”
“Don’t count on it,” Tejay muttered.
Damin looked at her with a frown. These off-handed comments about Terin were very unsettling. It wasn’t going to make it any easier to fight Hablet, if he had to waste time worrying about a man who should have been one of his closest allies.
“I’ve got a better idea,” he said, changing his mind. “You take Highcastle, Adham. Your father has been trading through there for decades. You know Braun and he trusts your father, so he’s likely to be much more cooperative if you ask him for help.”
“He’s your cousin, Damin.”
“Second cousin,” Damin corrected. “And he despises me because I’m Marla’s son. Don’t ask me to explain it. It’s something to do with Marla and all her cousins at Highcastle, particularly Braun’s sister, Ninane. Apparently, they’ve hated each other since they were children. You, on the other hand, have helped him get rich. Trust me, you’ll get a lot more out of him than I will.”
“What about Winternest?”
“Rorin can take the Widowmaker.”
The sorcerer’s head jerked up in alarm. “When did I become a spy?”
“Right now. I need intelligence I can trust. And you’ve been through the Widowmaker before, haven’t you?”
“I was twelve at the time,” Rorin reminded him. “And unconscious.”
“You know Westbrook, though,” Damin said. “And you’re Fardohnyan. You’ve got a better chance than the rest of us of finding out what’s going on over the border.”
“The only part of Westbrook I’m closely acquainted with is its dungeons, Damin,” he replied. Then he shrugged. “But, what the hell … there’s already a price on my head in Fardohnya for murder and probably another one for escaping lawful custody. Adding spying for a foreign power to the list won’t make it any worse, I suppose.”
Tejay smiled. “They can only hang you once, Rorin.”
“Once is actually one time too many, my lady.”
“You’re a magician, aren’t you?” Charel asked.
“Yes.”
“Then what are you worried about? You’ve got an advantage some men would kill for. The rest of us have to muddle through the hard way, son.”
“I’ll go,” Rorin hastened to assure them, but he still seemed very uncertain. “I’m just not sure I’m the right person for the job, my lord.”
“The right person for any job is the one who gets it done,” Charel Hawksword informed him gruffly. “And that’s usually,” he added, holding his cup out to Tejay for a refill, “some poor sod in the wrong place at the wrong time who gets left with no other option than to be a hero.”
CHAPTER 19
Brakandaran the Halfbreed shivered a little as the sun slipped down into the shadows behind them. It had been a cold day; spring merely a distant hope here in the foothills of the Sunrise Mountains. He hadn’t been much past Winternest in the last twelve years and it seemed strange to be walking the roads of Hythria again, particularly as he was here as a Fardohnyan spy.
Brak had always liked the Hythrun people, and it concerned him a little to think he was aiding a tyrant like Hablet of Fardohnya to overrun their country. But despots come and go, he knew. In the long run, Hythria would benefit much more by not losing what remained of this devastated generation to a useless war that would do nothing but entertain and empower the God of War.
Such dark thoughts plagued Brak as he walked. They were heading toward the village of Urso, some eighty miles from Cabradell. The capital of Sunrise Province was surely the most logical place to muster their troops if the Hythrun knew anything of Hablet’s invasion and they were planning to defend their border. Brak’s travelling companion was a young man named Ollie Kantel. Nineteen years old, swarthy and well-muscled, he was one of Chyler’s countless nephews who’d grown up in the Sunrise Mountains around Westbrook. Like Brak, he’d made the journey over the mountains into Hythria numerous times. This was the first time, however, he had ventured so far east.
They stopped on a small rise overlooking the village, a picture-perfect little hamlet nestled among the tall mountains. With roofs steeply sloped to shed the winter snows and smoke rising out of the chimneys making the air taste faintly of wood smoke, it seemed hard to believe plague or pestilence of any kind had ever blighted this land.
“Do you think there’s much chance the Hythrun know we’re planning to invade them?” Ollie asked, shifting his pack to the other shoulder.
“Not by the look of Urso,” Brak replied, casting his gaze over the sleepy little hamlet. He adjusted his own pack a little and moved on, heading down the deserted road. “Still, we’ll find out soon enough, I suppose.”
“How?” Ollie asked, hurrying to catch him.
“We’ll stop at the local inn tonight.”
“Is that a good idea?”
Brak glanced at him curiously. “Why wouldn’t it be a good idea?”
“Well, we’re spies …”
“Say it a little louder, son. I don’t think they heard you down in the village.”
The lad let out an exasperated sigh. “You know what I mean! Shouldn’t we be sneaking around, listening at keyholes? Stuff like that?”
“Ah!” Brak said. “You mean shouldn’t we act suspiciously so everyone will know we’re Fardohnyan spies, instead of acting like two simple travellers who have nothing to hide and need information about the road ahead?”
Ollie stopped and frowned. “Oh. I hadn’t actually thought of it like that.”
Brak kept on walking. “Which is why they hired me to do the thinking and you to do the leg work, Ollie, my lad.”
Obviously concerned, the boy hurried after him again. “So what are we going to tell people in the village, then? About who we are?”
“We’ll say we’re two simple travellers who need information about the road ahead.”
“Won’t it look suspicious? Us coming from the border, I mean? With it being closed and all?”
Brak shrugged. “We’ll tell them we got sick of waiting at Winternest for the border to reopen and decided to take the long way home.”
Ollie’s eyes lit up approvingly. “That’s a really good story, Brak. Have you done this sort of thing before?”
“There’s not much I haven’t done, Ollie,” he told his young companion. “Just lots of things I’d rather not remember doing.”
And with that cryptic comment, Brak left Ollie staring after him with a puzzled expression as he continued on down the road into the peaceful village of Urso.
Maybe Patanan, the God of Good Fortune, was looking out for them, because when the two spies arrived they discovered a travelling apothecary in town, with the unlikely name of Kelman Welm
an, who’d recently come from Cabradell. With only one tavern in the small village and only one meal served nightly to all the patrons who frequented the inn, Brak and Ollie found themselves seated at the long table in the taproom, several hours later, opposite the garrulous old man who seemed determined to provide them with all the intelligence they wanted, for nothing more than the pleasure of an audience who hadn’t heard all of his tales at least three times already. The table was lit by several fat candles and his old face looked quite flushed in their flickering light.
“Is there much plague in Cabradell?” Ollie asked when he learned the man had arrived from there recently. The boy wasn’t the least bit frightened by the notion of being hanged as a spy, but he was terrified of catching the plague.
“It seems to be on the wane wherever I go,” the old man replied. “No doubt they’ve taken my cure and now find themselves immune to the pestilence.”
“You have a tonic that provides immunity?” Ollie gasped.
“Actually, young man, I do. It’s made of—”
“Horse shit,” Brak cut in.
“I beg your pardon!” Kelman demanded, hugely offended.
“Horse shit,” Brak repeated, taking a mouthful of stew. “If your tonic’s as effective as you claim, then it’s probably made of horse shit.”
“Brak . . .” Ollie gasped, appalled at his bad manners.
“I’m not trying to insult the man, Ollie,” Brak explained. “I’m just stating a fact. The plague is carried by fleas and fleas hate anything to do with horses. It’s quite simple, really. You smell like a horse, the flea’ll jump on someone else. The Harshini have known that for thousands of years.”
Kelman Welman smiled indulgently at Brak. “You shouldn’t fill the lad’s head with fairy stories about creatures of myth, sir. Your tales of the Harshini are more romantic than the science of my cures, I don’t doubt, but far less effective.”
“The Harshini didn’t think so.”
“And you, I suppose, are some sort of authority on the Harshini?”
Brak shrugged. “I’ve studied them a little.”
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