Weavers of War wotf-5

by DAVID B. COE

  Adler and Rory stood on either side of her, clinging to her hands, but though the Weaver had released Renald, the boy still would not look at her, nor did he bother to wipe the blood from his neck. He stood perfectly still, staring straight ahead, like a soldier bravely awaiting execution.

  Soon archers were filing out of the towers to place their bows and quivers with the other arms. As the surrender continued, the Weaver whispered something to two of the other Qirsi, one of them a waif-like woman with eyes as bright as his own, and the other a man with pale yellow eyes in a lean face. A moment later these two started off in different directions, the woman with a half smile on her face.

  “You two,” the Weaver said, pointing to the captains Renald had left behind to protect the castle. “Come here.”

  The soldiers approached him, as a low murmur swept through the courtyard. They stopped just before him, both of them pale and tight-lipped.

  “Your duke left the two of you in command of the army?”

  Neither man spoke.

  “Answer me.”

  The Weaver didn’t move at all, but it seemed that both men suddenly sagged, as if they had abruptly taken ill.

  “Yes,” one of them said. “We’re in command.”

  He’s using magic on them, she had time to think.

  “Get on your knees.”

  The men dropped to their knees, their heads bowed.

  The Weaver still held his sword, and now he stepped forward, raising the weapon as to strike them.

  “No!” Elspeth cried.

  The Qirsi glanced at her. “They’re soldiers, my lady. They understand that I can’t allow them to live. So long as these captains live, your husband’s soldiers remain an army. Without them, they become nothing more than a collection of defeated men.”

  He faced them again, and with swift, powerful strokes hewed off the head of one man and then the other. Their bodies toppled sideways to the earth, blood darkening the grass. The other men said nothing nor did they make any move to retrieve their weapons.

  Rory, on the other hand, was sobbing, his face pressed against her dress. Elspeth stroked his head, fearing that she’d be ill.

  “See what you’ve done?” Renald said, glowering at her. “You made those men surrender and now they’re dead!”

  She should have said something. She should have had some answer for the hatred she saw in her son’s eyes. But she couldn’t think of anything adequate. And in the next moment matters grew far worse.

  “What are they doing with Father Coulson?” Adler asked.

  The duchess’s head snapped up in time to see the man the Weaver had sent away moments before leading the prelate down the broad stone stairway that linked the castle’s upper and lower wards. Even from this distance, she could see that Coulson was trembling, and that his legs seemed barely to support him.

  “What are they going to do to him, Mother?” Adler asked again.

  She glanced at Renald, whose face had gone white and whose eyes still held such contempt.

  “I don’t know, child,” she said. A lie, for who in that ward didn’t know, save for the young ones? The cloisters had long been tied to the courts and were known to be hostile to the Qirsi and their adherence to the Old Faith. Was it so surprising that these renegade white-hairs should strike at the prelacy?

  “They’re going to kill him,” Renald said bitterly.

  “They are not!” Adler shot back. “Are they, Mother?”

  “Hush, child.”

  The Qirsi man pulled the prelate with him until they stood before the Weaver. Then he threw Coulson to the ground and handed the Weaver the hilt of a shattered sword.

  “This is his?” the Weaver asked.

  “Yes, Weaver.”

  The Qirsi nodded. “Thank you, Uestem.” He looked down at Coulson, a smile playing at the corners of his broad mouth. “So you fancy yourself a warrior, do you, Father Prelate?”

  “I’m a man of the cloister,” he answered in a quaking voice. “But I’ll gladly take up arms to defend my house and my realm.”

  “Bravely said. Of course, your house is defeated, and your realm will soon be mine. So it seems your courage has been wasted.”

  Without another word, the Weaver raised his weapon once more and hacked off the prelate’s head.

  Adler screamed, Rory’s sobbing grew louder.

  Several of Galdasten’s soldiers looked away. Others shouted angrily, a few of them taking a step toward their weapons.

  There was a strange, dry cracking sound, and the nearest of these men collapsed to the ground clutching his leg and howling with pain.

  “That was his leg,” the Weaver said, his voice carrying across the ward. “It could just as easily have been his neck. And it will be for the next man who takes even a single step toward those weapons. Do I make myself clear?”

  The others who had started toward the weapons stood utterly still, but several of them continued to eye the swords.

  Apparently the Weaver noticed this as well, for a moment later there was a second snapping noise and another soldier fell to the ground. This one, however, didn’t cry out, nor did he writhe in pain. He simply lay still, his head tipped at a wrong angle, his eyes gazing sightless at the sky. The other men stepped back.

  “You’re going to kill us, too, aren’t you?” Renald said, drawing the Weaver’s gaze.

  “I have no intention of killing you today, Lord Galdasten.”

  “What about tomorrow, or the day after that?”

  The man smiled thinly. “Gleaning has always been my least favorite of the Qirsi magics.”

  Renald said nothing.

  “For now, you’ll be placed in the prison tower with your mother and your brothers. Beyond that, I can’t say.”

  “You intend to rule the Forelands, and to be served by Qirsi lords, just as our king is served now by Eandi nobles. You can’t have men like me about, reminding your subjects of the day when the great houses ruled the seven realms.”

  For some time the Qirsi just stared at him. Then he smiled faintly and said, “No, I don’t suppose we can.” With that, he turned away and beckoned to another of his Qirsi soldiers. “Take them to the prison tower,” he said, his voice so low that Elspeth had to strain to hear any of it. “Put the mother in one chamber, the boys in another. Make them comfortable, be certain that they’re fed, but don’t allow any of the Eandi to see them.”

  “Yes, Weaver.”

  “Can’t we be in the same chamber?” the duchess asked. “The younger ones are frightened.”

  The Weaver frowned at her, as if annoyed that she had overheard. “I don’t think that would be wise.”

  Rory still clung to her and now she indicated the boy with an open hand.

  “But look at him. He’s only a boy. Surely there would be no harm-”

  “I said no!” He spun toward the Qirsi soldier. “Take them away from here now!”

  There could no longer be any doubt. Renald was right. The Qirsi intended to kill all three boys. Perhaps her as well, though she cared far less about that. They wouldn’t do it here. The executions of the captains and prelate had been intended to dishearten Galdasten’s soldiers, to sap them of their will to fight. But the killing of the duchess and her sons would enrage them. No, they would have to wait, though not long, for there was also danger in keeping them imprisoned for too long. It would be this night, perhaps the morning. No later. Elspeth felt her legs give way and suddenly found herself sitting on the grass only a short distance from the headless body of Father Coulson. Rory stared at her, a puzzled look on his puffy, tear-streaked face.

  “Mother?”

  “Get up,” the Qirsi soldier said, his voice flat.

  “Please,” she sobbed, hot tears coursing down her cheeks. “Don’t do this.”

  The Weaver kept his back to her, speaking in low tones with another of his soldiers.

  “For pity’s sake, they’re just children!”

  At that, he glanced back. “Yes.
But one day they’d be men.”

  Chapter Ten

  The Weaver had told Nitara that they would be there, much the way a parent might tell a child that she was to have a younger sibling.

  Two of my chancellors await us in the city, to join our assault on the castle and add their number to my army.

  They had been at Galdasten’s pier waiting to greet the ship. When Dusaan stepped off the vessel, they knelt before him, compelling the rest in the army, those who had already ridden with him and killed with him, to do the same. A man and a woman. The man was a merchant, with an air of success and wealth about him. He was lean of face, but his body was thick and his belly round. He had lived well.

  The woman was said to be a merchant as well, but Nitara found that difficult to believe. She was as young as Nitara, perhaps younger, with thick white hair that she wore loose to her shoulders, and brilliant yellow eyes that were almost a match for Dusaan’s. She was as lean as the other merchant was broad, as beautiful as he was plain. It took Nitara but a moment to understand that they weren’t a couple, that this woman had her sights set higher. One need only see how she looked at Dusaan to know just how high. Nitara hated her before they left the pier. By the time they reached the walls of Galdasten Castle, she was ready to plunge her blade into the woman’s back.

  Jastanne ja Triln. The man’s name she already had forgotten, but the woman’s name stuck in her mind like a child’s rhyme, repeating itself again and again. Both merchants had shaping power and mists and winds-it was small wonder they had become chancellors in the Weaver’s movement, or that Dusaan welcomed them into his army with such enthusiasm.

  Perhaps he didn’t notice how this woman eyed him, how her cheeks reddened every time their eyes met. Surely he would have been as discomfited by her affections as he had been by Nitara’s. This was no time for such thoughts. They were at war, fighting for the freedom of all Qirsi in the Forelands, fulfilling the dream that had brought them all to the Weaver’s cause in the first place. That was what the Weaver had told her, and that was what he would have told this woman, this Jastanne ja Triln, had he only noticed.

  Except that as the Weaver strode toward the great fortress, flanked by his two chancellors, and followed by the rest, including Nitara, Dusaan did appear to notice. When had she ever known him to miss anything? In Jastanne’s case, it seemed he simply didn’t mind.

  The ease with which they took the castle should have been cause for rejoicing. Even the unfortunate but necessary execution of Galdasten’s three young lords the following morning would not have been enough to dampen such a victory. But Nitara could think only of how the Weaver had trusted Jastanne and the other chancellor with tasks that would have fallen to her just a day before. He sent Jastanne into the city to find other Qirsi to join their cause; he had the man lead a group of several shapers to imprison Galdasten’s soldiers. In the span of a single day, she had become merely another servant of the Weaver, but a single soldier in a growing army.

  The morning after their victory, with the grievous cries of the duchess still echoing through the castle and many of the newly recruited Qirsi guarding the fortress walls, they took nearly every horse in the city and castle, and started southward in pursuit of Galdasten’s army. Again, the chancellors rode with the Weaver; the rest trailed behind. Dusaan had barely said a word to Nitara since they docked in Galdasten; she had little choice but to ride with B’Serre, Rov, and the others from the court of Curtell. If the other ministers had noted her fall from the Weaver’s favor, they had the good sense not to mention it. They made room for her, so that she could ride beside them, and they continued their conversation. Nitara said nothing-she couldn’t take her eyes off the woman riding with her Weaver-but at least she didn’t have to ride alone, looking foolish and pitiable.

  Late in the day, as they rested along the banks of a small rill, Jastanne approached them, leading her mount on foot, the wind making her hair dance, the setting sun gleaming like gold in her eyes. In spite of herself, Nitara could see what the Weaver might find attractive in this woman.

  “Hello,” she called to them as she approached, a hand raised in greeting.

  B’Serre and the others nodded, and Rov called out a tentative “Hello” in return.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  “Not at all, Chancellor.”

  She smiled, though it never reached her eyes. “Good. The Weaver asked me to speak with you. He intends to divide the army into smaller forces, and he’s placed Uestem and me in charge of doing so.”

  “Has he really,” Nitara said, her voice flat.

  Gorlan shot her a look, and gave a small shake of his head, but Nitara ignored him.

  “You’ve been with us for less than a day, and already we’re to take orders from you?”

  The smile lingered on Jastanne’s face as she eyed Nitara. Then she turned to the rest of them. “Shapers are to go with Uestem, as are those with fire magic. If you have mists and winds or language of beasts, you’re to stay with me. And if your powers place you with both of us, follow the deeper magic-if you have mists but also fire, stay with me, language of beasts and shaping, go with Uestem.”

  “Yes, Chancellor,” Gorlan said. “Thank you.”

  “We’ll ride a bit further today. We’ll divide into units tonight when we stop. Uestem will be on the west end of camp, and I’ll be to the east.”

  The others nodded, and the woman’s smile broadened.

  “I don’t know how all this will separate out, but I look forward to working with as many of you as possible.” She started to walk away, then halted, glancing back over her shoulder at Nitara. “Minister, would you walk with me for a moment?”

  Nitara almost refused. She would have given anything for the courage to tell this woman exactly how much she hated her. But Jastanne was the Weaver’s chancellor, and Nitara knew that he would be furious with her. Besides, having both mists and winds and language of beasts, Nitara would be under the woman’s command. What could she do but follow? She knew the others were watching her, wondering if she had already pushed the chancellor too far, but Nitara didn’t look back at them.

  “The Weaver has told me a good deal about you,” Jastanne said, when they were alone.

  “Has he?”

  “Yes. He tells me that you’ve served him quite well since joining the movement. He said you even killed an old lover who betrayed us.”

  Quite unexpectedly, she found herself angry with the Weaver. She had never thought she could feel such a thing, but it was not his place to tell this woman what had happened with Kayiv. “What of it?” she demanded.

  Jastanne stopped and stared at her, that smile on her lips once more. “You don’t care much for me, do you?”

  Nitara looked away. “I hardly know you.”

  “I could make the same point.”

  “Was there something you wanted, Chancellor? A reason why you pulled me away from my friends?”

  “I sense your hostility, Minister. I did before as well. And I want to know if I need to speak with the Weaver about this, if it compromises your ability to serve his movement.”

  Nitara felt the color drain from her cheeks. “No, Chancellor.”

  The woman regarded her for several moments. “What is it about me, Minister? Why do you hate me so?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not … I don’t hate you.”

  “Now you’re lying.”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Wouldn’t I? Or are you afraid that I would, all too well?” The smile again, kinder this time. “You love him very much, don’t you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “There are others, you know. There are women in every realm who serve this movement. Do you really believe that you’re the only one who feels this way about him?”

  “No,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  “Look at him,” the woman went on. “Do you really think that a man like that-a Qi
rsi king-will take but one wife? How many women did your emperor have?”

  Nitara shrugged. “I don’t know. Several.”

  “Yes. And so will the Weaver. You may well be one of them. And I might as well. We’re going to have to get along, you and I, not only during this war, but after it. So I’d suggest you put your hatred aside. The Weaver feels that you could be of value as a noble once we control the Forelands. You’d be a fool to do anything to change his mind.”

  “I understand, Chancellor.”

  “I have others to inform of our plans. We should be riding again shortly.”

  Before Nitara could even nod to her, Jastanne turned and walked away, lithe and confident. Nitara watched her go, then started toward her mount, having no desire to face her companions again. Before she reached her horse, however, she heard Gorlan calling to her. She stopped, closing her eyes for just a moment.

  “What?” she said, looking at the other Qirsi.

  “Are you mad?” Gorlan asked, stopping just in front of her. “You can’t afford to anger that woman, no matter what you might think of her.”

  “I know that, Gorlan,” she said crossly. “Thank you.”

  “What did she say to you?”

  “Basically the same thing you just did.”

  “Well, you’d better listen. I don’t even understand why you’re so angry with her. What could she have possibly done to you?”

  “Nothing, Gorlan. Nothing at all. Just leave me alone.”

  He frowned, shaking his head. After a moment he left her, as did several of the others. Only B’Serre remained with Nitara.

  “I think I understand,” the minister said softly. “And I don’t really blame you.”

  Nitara raked a hand through her hair. “I’m a fool. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “Sure you do. It seems pretty normal to me. Clearly the Weaver thinks highly of you. You were the one riding beside him before the chancellors arrived.” She gave a conspiratorial smile. “If I were you, I’d hate her, too.”