Warlord

by Jennifer Fallon

  “Uncle Mahkas wants to know what you’re whispering about,” Emilie called.

  Luciena turned toward the bed, smiling. “We were discussing your quite remarkable ability to avoid your lessons, young lady. Once this is over, I expect Uncle Mahkas will be sending you back to the nursery where you belong.”

  Emilie grinned at her mother and turned to Mahkas. “You’re not going to send me back to the nursery, are you, Uncle Mahkas? It’s full of horrible little boys.”

  Mahkas smiled, patting her arm reassuringly with a shake of his head.

  “See! Uncle Mahkas says I’m not missing anything. Besides, I read better than Aleesha. She can’t teach me anything.”

  Sadly, Emilie was probably correct. And in a way, Luciena didn’t blame her daughter for constantly trying to escape the nursery. With her two brothers and the four young Lionsclaw children down there, it really was full of horrible little boys at the moment.

  “I’m ready to start as soon as you are, my lady,” Darian advised, finally happy with the arrangement of his scalpels.

  Xanda leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “I’ll see you when you’re done then. I’m heading into the city to check on a few things.” What Xanda neglected to mention was that he was taking this opportunity to meet with Starros and his friends to work on some last-minute details of their evacuation plan. He looked at Mahkas and smiled encouragingly. “I suppose this will all be over and you’ll be fighting fit again by the time I get back, Uncle Mahkas.”

  His uncle nodded wanly and whispered something to Emilie.

  “He says if you open the city gates while he’s sick, he’ll have you castrated. What does castrated mean, Papa?”

  “Nothing you need bother yourself with, sweetheart,” her father replied. He frowned at his uncle but said nothing further, leaving Luciena alone with Darian, Emilie and Mahkas.

  After that, Darian Coe took over. He explained what he intended to do to both his patient and to Luciena, who had volunteered to assist him mostly so she could stay and keep an eye on Emilie. It sounded straightforward enough. Darian intended to slice into the centre of the infected area, clean it, and then hopefully find the metal fragment causing all this woe, remove it, debride the lesion of all the dead and dying tissue, flush the wound and then let the maggots do the rest, eating the diseased flesh and leaving a clean area he could stitch closed at a later time.

  Once he finished his explanation, the former court’esa glanced down at his patient. “Are you sure you don’t want anything to bite on, my lord? The draught I gave you will take the edge off the pain, but it’s still going to hurt like hell.”

  “Just do it!” Mahkas rasped. With his left hand he took Emilie’s hand in his and smiled at the child. “Leila is here. She’ll help me bear it.”

  “My name is Emilie, Uncle Mahkas.”

  “Yes … I know … Emilie …”

  “What do you want me to do?” Luciena asked the slave.

  “Pass me the instruments as I ask for them. And try to keep the wound clear of blood so I can see what I’m doing. That jug there is full of boiled water. I’ll need you to wash the wound thoroughly before I release the maggots.”

  Darian picked up one of his scalpels laid out on the tray beside the bed and then turned to Mahkas. “Are you sure you’re ready for this, my lord?”

  “Do it,” he croaked. His face sheened with sweat, Mahkas turned his face away, fixing his gaze on Emilie. A moment later, with infinite care and a sudden burst of foul air as the pus in the wound was released, Darian Coe sliced his way into Mahkas’s infected arm.

  Mahkas never uttered a sound as Darian worked, a fact that astonished Luciena. Just watching the physician at work was making her ill, but Mahkas bore the agony with stoic acceptance.

  Perhaps it was something to do with his madness. Perhaps, along with his inability to comprehend emotional pain, the ability to feel physical pain had been affected, too. Luciena wasn’t sure, but in a way she was glad. Emilie was watching with intense interest as her mother swabbed at the wound so Darian could find the tiny shard. She didn’t seem to notice the foul smell, or be bothered by the blood and pus seeping from the dead and dying flesh of her uncle’s forearm. Had Mahkas been thrashing around, screaming in agony, Luciena guessed, her daughter might not be nearly so enchanted with the whole disgusting spectacle.

  “There it is!” Darian exclaimed.

  Luciena and Emilie both leaned forward as Darian gently lifted a bloodied lump from the wound with a thin pair of tongs. To Luciena, the strange object looked too small to have caused so much trouble. In fact it looked like a bright blue thorn.

  “What is it?”

  “I have no idea,” the court’esa shrugged. “I doubt it’s metal, though. It shows no sign of rust or decay.”

  “So it’s not the tip of an arrow or a spear, then?” Emilie asked. “Can I see it?”

  She held out her hand. Darian dropped the bloodied little blue thorn into her palm. Emilie examined it curiously and then held it out to her uncle. “Did you want to see it, Uncle Mahkas?”

  Mahkas shook his head and turned his face away.

  “Emilie! Put that down. It’s disgusting!”

  “But don’t you want to know what it is, Mama?”

  “Whatever it is, it was in pretty deep,” Darian remarked, as he started to cut away the dead flesh. “It’s taken years to find its way out. You can see the track of scar tissue in the muscle where it’s worked its way up.”

  “Really?” Emilie asked, thoroughly fascinated, still holding the bloodied shard. “Show me!”

  “Don’t be so morbid, Emilie,” Luciena scolded. “And get rid of that thing.”

  “Can I keep it?”

  “I suggest you wash it first,” the slave recommended.

  “Can I, Mama?”

  “Why, for pity’s sake?”

  “As a souvenir,” she announced. “I’ve decided I’m going to be a physician, too, and this will be a reminder of my very first operation.”

  Luciena despaired, convinced her only daughter was beyond redemption. “Keep it if you must,” she sighed, not wishing to make an issue of it in front of Mahkas. “Just make sure you do what Darian says and wash it. Properly. And don’t go around showing it to people. They’ll think there’s something wrong with you.”

  “More water, please, my lady.”

  Luciena washed the wound again as Emilie turned her attention back to her gruesome souvenir. It was then that Luciena noticed Mahkas’s eyes were closed, his face relaxed. For a brief moment, she wondered if he was dead, but then she saw the gentle rise and fall of his chest and realised he had, regretfully, just passed out from the pain.

  CHAPTER 68

  “They’re here,” the scout informed Damin, Almodavar and the rest of their small band, pointing to another rough map drawn in the mud a couple of hours later. The rain was pelting down relentlessly, smacking the oiled cape they were using for shelter during this brief halt in their pursuit of the Fardohnyan general and his missing cavalry. It was a bit more than two hours since the ambush closed around the Fardohnyans. Damin figured the death toll must already be in the thousands. If the man had any human feeling at all, getting Regis to surrender might be as easy as giving him the opportunity.

  He turned to Almodavar. “You were wrong.”

  “How so?”

  “You assumed they’d set up their command post here,” he reminded him, pointing to another spot on the map a bare inch from where the scout had indicated. “You’re out by a whole … hundred yards, I reckon.”

  Almodavar rolled his eyes and turned to the scout. “How many?”

  “In the command tent? About half a dozen, including Lord Regis. Plus a constant stream of messengers.”

  “It’s not going to be easy sneaking up on him,” the old captain surmised. “He commands an almost three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the terrain. Where are the cavalry?”

  “Back here,” the scout replied, pointing to
another small valley between two hills just to the north of the Fardohnyan command post. “I gather they’re just waiting for the word to move.”

  “He won’t give it,” Damin predicted.

  “Are you sure?” Almodavar asked.

  Damin pointed further down the rough map. “They’re too far back. The spot he’s chosen would have been fine at the start of the day—I’d have chosen it too, if it were my decision—but his army’s been drawn too far down the valley. He might have had a chance if he mobilised the moment our lines looked like breaking, but he’s left it too late. If he sent out the cavalry now, we’d have a good half hour to mount a counterattack before they got to the actual battle.”

  The scout nodded in agreement. “He didn’t sound like a man about to mobilise anything. Mostly he sounded as if he was trying to reduce the damage by getting the stragglers to pull back.”

  “How close were you able to get?”

  “Close enough to hear them talking,” the scout replied, squatting down to indicate his route on the map. “The only way to approach without being seen is along the northern ridge of the hill here. The overhang gives you protection from being spotted from above. After that, if you scale the cliff on the north western side of the hill, you can get close enough to hear what they’re saying.”

  “And if we go over the cliff?”

  “Then we could take them from behind,” the scout suggested. “They won’t even know we’re there until we’re running them through.”

  “We have to scale a cliff, though?” Almodavar asked doubtfully.

  “It’s not that high.” The scout shrugged. “Forty, maybe fifty feet.”

  “You can stay and mind the horses if you’re getting too old for this sort of thing, Almodavar,” Damin offered.

  The old man glared at him. “You worry about yourself, lad, and I’ll worry about what I’m getting too old for.”

  Damin expected no other answer. He turned and looked around the circle of faces, all huddled under the oiled cape. “Let’s do this, then,” he declared. “And no unnecessary killing. Wound if you have to, but I don’t want anybody accidentally killing Regis. He can’t surrender his damned cavalry if he’s dead. And given there’s only fourteen of us, I’d rather we didn’t have to capture them the hard way.”

  “Sire?” one of the men asked, obviously not sure what he meant.

  “He means we might have a bit of a problem surrounding five thousand men and convincing them to throw down their arms,” Almodavar explained.

  “I don’t know,” the scout joked. “Fourteen Hythrun Raiders against five thousand Fardohnyan light horse? Seems a fairly even fight to me.”

  “If only your skill matched your ability to brag about it, Noran,” Almodavar lamented, shaking his head at the young man’s foolishness.

  “How will we know which one is Lord Regis?” one of the others asked.

  “We won’t know,” Damin said. “Hence the order to avoid unnecessary killing. Any questions?”

  The silence that greeted his question was enough for Damin.

  He smiled. “Let’s go hunt Fardohnyan.”

  Scaling a steep rock face in the rain with no ropes while wearing full battle gear was, Damin Wolfblade decided about halfway up the cliff, an experience he could well have done without. It wasn’t so much the height. Damin had spent enough nights as a boy watching the city lights of Krakandar while perched on the palace roof for the drop to hold no fear for him. And it was by no means a sheer cliff. Weathered and broken in places, it offered plenty of hand and footholds for the ambitious climber. No, what made it terrifying was the rain. The cliff was slimy. Tiny rivulets of water trickled down the rocks, merging in places to form full-blown waterfalls. It was perilously slippery and with the added weight of leather armour and his weapons, Damin was dangerously off-balance. He could appreciate why Regis had chosen this place as his command post. Only a madman would think climbing up the treacherous cliff behind him was a viable option.

  A few feet from the top, Damin stopped and signalled his men to do likewise. The rain was starting to relent and he could just make out the enemy voices. They were speaking Fardohnyan and although he understood the language, he couldn’t quite make out what they were saying.

  Carefully, Damin moved a little further up. Any noise now would give them away and the rain, which up until a moment ago he’d been roundly cursing, was easing off and no longer offering them cover. As slowly as he dared, Damin raised his eyes over the rim of the cliff and then jerked his head back again as a pair of booted feet approached. Waving his men down, Damin froze against the muddy cliff face.

  The boots stopped just above Damin’s head.

  He held his breath, praying to Zegarnald to protect them, wondering what had drawn the man out into the rain and over to the edge where one glance down would reveal the dozen or more Hythrun Raiders climbing up the cliff. A moment later, Damin had his answer when a thin stream of liquid shot over the side, mingling with the rain until it vanished below. He glanced across at the man beside him, the scout, Noran, who had already climbed this cliff once today. The man grinned and rolled his eyes and then pointed upward. A few moments later the stream stopped and presumably the urinating Fardohnyan had returned to the shelter of the command pavilion. Just to be certain, Damin silently counted to twenty in his head, and then once again inched his eyes over the edge of the cliff. This time the small plateau was clear, only the back of the pavilion visible.

  With a final heave over the edge, Damin lay flat against the wet ground as the others moved up behind him. Glancing around, he did a quick count and discovered all twelve of his men and Almodavar, who looked no more bothered by the climb than the men half his age, were accounted for. He climbed to his feet, signalled his men to fan out to surround the pavilion, and then, just as the final raindrops fell, gave the order to attack.

  The command pavilion was really just a large square tent with three sides rolled up to give a clear view of the countryside. Regis obviously wasn’t a man concerned with aesthetics so much as practicality.

  “Ollie, take word to Captain Jerris,” Damin heard a man ordering as they closed in. “Tell him we’re pulling back.”

  “Ollie,” Damin suggested in Fardohnyan, as he and his Raiders surrounded the open pavilion with drawn swords, “how about you stay right where you are, my friend.”

  With no advance warning of their approach, the half-dozen Fardohnyans inside were taken completely by surprise. Almost before Damin had finished speaking, the officers were disarmed and on their knees, swords to their throats. Everyone, that is, except the young messenger, Ollie, and the man who was issuing the orders.

  His sword still drawn, Damin turned to the older man. He was dark-haired and swarthy, and much younger than Damin was expecting, perhaps only in his mid-thirties. “Lord Axelle Regis, I presume?”

  The Fardohnyan glanced around the pavilion at his captured men and then fixed his gaze on Damin. “Impressive. How did you … ah, the cliff. A clever ploy, sneaking up like that.”

  “I’ve been practising my sneaking manoeuvre on my stepsister,” Damin informed him. “It worked a treat with her, too. Almodavar?”

  “Yes, your highness?”

  “Set a perimeter. I don’t want any surprises until we’re done here.”

  The old captain signalled four of the men to follow, leaving the rest to watch over the six Fardohnyans they’d already captured.

  “Your highness?” Regis repeated with a raised brow.

  “I’m sorry. Did I forget to introduce myself? How rude of me. I am Damin Wolfblade.”

  Regis looked him up and down, clearly sceptical. “You’re the Wolfblade heir?”

  “You seem unconvinced.”

  The Fardohnyan general shrugged. “The intelligence we received about Damin Wolfblade, sir, does not lend one to expect a man who would scale a cliff in the rain with a dozen men to capture an entire army.”

  “Well, that’s what you get for listen
ing to gossip. Your sword please?”

  “You’re assuming I’m going to surrender.”

  “If you want to die, I’d be happy to oblige, Lord Regis.”

  The Fardohnyan hesitated. “What are your terms?” he asked, although he made no move to give up either his weapon or his army.

  “You sound the surrender and we’ll stop butchering every man you have on the field at present.”

  Regis glanced around, perhaps debating his chances of calling for help. “If this was Fardohnya and our roles reversed, we wouldn’t offer you mercy.”

  Damin raised his sword and pointed it at Axelle Regis’s heart. “You mistake practicality for mercy, my lord. I have other plans for you and your men.”

  Regis thought on that, looked down at the sword against his breast and then glanced to the north, where the hidden cavalry lay in wait. “I have a cavalry reserve plenty big enough to turn the tide of the battle, your highness.”

  “Which you’ve left it too late to deploy,” Damin reminded him. “But you don’t need me to tell you that. You worked that out about an hour ago, didn’t you? The only thing keeping you here now is that you didn’t want to be seen abandoning your army.”

  “Unlike your High Prince who turned tail and ran the moment things started looking a little shaky.”

  Damin smiled. “Hotly pursued by your infantry, who fell straight into our trap, remember? Do you really have time for this, Lord Regis?”

  The Fardohnyan hesitated and then slowly unsheathed his sword. He studied it for a moment, then offered it to Damin, hilt first.

  Damin lowered his blade and took the sword from him, bowing in acknowledgment of the general’s gesture. “Your surrender is accepted, Lord Regis. Issue the command to your troops.”

  “I’ll need some of these men you’ve taken prisoner to relay the orders.”

  Damin allowed Regis to select two officers to carry news of the surrender, both to the cavalry and to the men on the main battlefield, the sound of which could be heard faintly in the distance.