In the Company of the Dead (The Sundered Oath Book 1)

by Ballintyne, Ciara

  Lyram hunched his shoulders. Not since Zaheva, and even still Everard hesitated to speak her name.

  “It’s the siege,” Lyram said, his voice rough. The whisky, clenched now in two hands, shivered in its glass. “Warfare forces a man to acuity. Sometimes a man desires his enemy to underestimate him, but we are in a precarious position, with no surgeon, and food strictly rationed. These are not things we want to alert our enemy to, so I cannot afford to be anything less than alert. If they see any weakness in us, they may risk forcing an assault we can’t repel. As for Ellaeva...”

  The memory of her granting mercy to the sick with the grim certainty than no one could ease her suffering left him with a deep sense of exhaustion and sadness. How did she climb out of bed to face that every day? An ache grew as a lump formed in his throat, and Lyram coughed before speaking again.

  “She’s very much alone. No one can bear her burden for her.”

  “But you want to.”

  Lyram scowled at the deadpan tone. “You think too much.”

  “Aye, sir, it’s what you pay me to do.”

  The rattle of feet on the stair outside interrupted the conversation, and Galdron entered, the leather of his coat of plate creaking. A woman followed, clad in incongruous black waistcoat and tight breeches in the Mysenan style, with her hair pulled back in a tight chignon and carrying a hat adorned with a huge white feather. No weapons hung at her belt, and she wore no armour, but an old, thin scar slashed white across her tanned cheek. Ellaeva brought up the rear, moving like a ghost.

  “This meeting is a waste of time,” the captain growled, looking around the room but not meeting any one eye. “Whatever this Velenese scum wants, we won’t give it to her.”

  Lyram waved Galdron to silence and fixed the strange woman with a steely eye. If she was at all bothered by Galdron’s insult, it didn’t show. She was unfamiliar to him, but she could only be Sayella LaFete. Ahlleyn women became soldiers often enough, though less so among the Velenese, but there was only one great woman commander, not counting Ellaeva herself. Sayella’s fashionable but unsuitable style was unmistakeable. Given her reputation, she’d likely been called worse than Galdron could bring himself to speak.

  “Sayella LaFete,” he said in a flat voice.

  The woman swept a courtly bow instead of the usual curtsy. “Indeed, my lord. Assuming you are, in fact, my lord.” She spoke in heavily accented Ahlleyn, pronouncing ‘in’ more like ‘een’, and inflecting the end of every sentence upwards, even when not asking a question.

  “You know well who I am, and I’ve heard of you, too.” He leaned forward over the table, resting his hands upon the dragon-shaped basket-hilt of the Aharris sword. “You style yourself the bastard daughter of a Velenese earl, and that’s how your company is called, isn’t it? The great mercenary captain Sayella and her Gallowglaigh Bastards. Who are you working for?”

  Sayella’s smile didn’t waver, but it didn’t touch her eyes, and malice glinted hard in their depths. “No mercenary captain worth her salt reveals her client where discretion is commanded. But I’ve been instructed to inform you that certain Velenese interests are displeased.”

  Ellaeva snorted, and Lyram sank back into his chair, steepling his fingers. The truth, or a calculated lie? It was plausible, but the best lies were. How did Bradlin fit into this version of the truth though? If he really had seen Bradlin.

  “A pretty lie,” Lyram said. “Bradlin is with you, which means Traeburhn, which means the prince, which means internal Ahlleyn politics, not Velenese interests.”

  Sayella’s face didn’t shift, but to an eye practised in the king’s court, it was a fraction too frozen. Perhaps the mercenary captain didn’t know how high this went, but she recognised at least one of those names. Probably Bradlin’s. Did that discount Velenese involvement? There could easily be some in the Velenese court with a vested interest in currying favour with Drault—or some whose interests aligned with the prince’s desire to prevent his marriage to the Velenese princess. What was Drault even playing at? Was this about ruining the impending nuptials and the peace treaty, with Lyram’s removal a mere convenience in all that?

  “Tell me what you want.” He reclaimed his glass and waved, like a lord directing a servant, for the mercenary to continue—a calculated insult. The thick gold band and huge ruby of the Aharris signet flashed in the light.

  “You.” Sayella’s smile only broadened, appearing incongruous on her grim face. Her green eyes still shone like polished emeralds. Emeralds were, above all else, hard. “If you’re surrendered to us, the army will decamp and leave the rest of the castle untouched. There will be no sacking, no looting—and no raping.”

  Though she pronounced ‘the’ with a soft ‘dzee’ sound, there was nothing soft about that threat. The room stilled, the air flat with tension. Galdron broke the silence, his fist smashing to the table. Everard jumped, and Lyram’s shoulders tightened, but he remained still. Markers scattered across the table with a sound like falling gravel and tumbled across the floor in all directions. Neither Ellaeva nor Sayella so much as twitched, caught in a battle of stares. The difference in the strength of their gazes was too fine to slide a dragon scale through.

  “Outrageous!” Galdron’s ginger moustaches quivered, his face reddening, and his mouth worked as if he could find no more words to express the depths of his distress. “Surrender our commander, and the king’s cousin, to a Velenese bastard?”

  The mercenary captain spread her black-gloved hands, a mocking smile curving the corners of her mouth. “Who would think it, that the army holding you trapped like rats on a sinking ship should make an outrageous demand? This is your choice. Surrender yourself, Lord Aharris, or we will raze this castle to the ground.”

  Lyram waved Galdron back from the table. The captain, almost foaming at the mouth with his decades of hatred for Velena, was too distraught to be trusted, and liable to reveal important information if allowed to speak again. Galdron opened his mouth, but Lyram negated the act with a curt gesture of one hand. His expression sullen, the captain retreated back to stand beside Janun, who still swirled his own whisky thoughtfully in his glass.

  With great effort, Lyram kept his face neutral as he turned back to Sayella, ignoring his own inner turmoil. What was his life worth anymore, anyway? Small children lived in the castle, and serving women. He stared down into the amber of the whisky. Since Zaheva’s death, he’d been a shell of a man, consumed by an emptiness neither whisky nor a desire for revenge could fill. Did he price his life higher than some two hundred or more souls?

  From the corner, Galdron’s glare lashed Lyram. To avoid his captain’s eyes, he sipped the whisky and kept his face smooth. The smallest twitch of his face at the wrong moment could ruin any bluff he might make.

  “What do you want him for?” Everard’s face and expression remained neutral as he gazed upon Sayella, but he pushed his glasses back up his nose even though they weren’t slipping. “To kill him?”

  Sayella waggled a finger. “For me to know and you to find out.”

  “Hardly any comfort,” his aide muttered, his tone both reproachful and mournful. He fiddled with the fall of his kilt, then clasped his hands behind his back.

  “I don’t need to give you any. He’ll come out, or I’ll come in, and crush you on the way.”

  Lyram set the whisky down and flicked his fingers at her. “You may go. You’ll have your answer at dawn tomorrow.”

  Sayella scowled and opened her mouth. “You—”

  Lyram cut her off. “That is my best offer. Be gone.”

  Her face darkened and contorted, anger distorting her beauty and pulling the scar across her cheek taut in a grotesque fashion. Before she spoke, Galdron crossed the floor and seized her by the shoulder hard enough to pinch. Sayella’s face writhed with suppressed emotion, but she allowed herself to be steered from the room.

  Ellaeva followed, sweeping the room with a forbidding stare on her way.

  “You will g
o to them?” the castellan said as soon as the door closed. Behind him on the wall hung a portrait of a stern-looking knight in kilt and plaid, claymore in hand—a relative, no doubt, and the forbidding look on Janun’s face made the resemblance between them striking. The last light of the sun glowed orange through the arrowslit to the left of the portrait.

  “Should I not?”

  “We’ve no idea what they intend. Maybe they’ll kill you out of hand, which is bad enough. It may be worse if they don’t. You’re the king’s cousin, a powerful political bargaining piece by any measure, and the heir to Duke Habrodeen, who would surely pay dear for your safe return. You are also the kingdom’s foremost military commander, and a widower—some ties may be forged with marriage that would not be easily undone. You’re valuable and could be used against us in a multitude of ways. One could argue it’s treason to allow you to do this thing.”

  Janun had a surprisingly firm grasp of politics for a minor knight all the way out in the Borders. Lyram shifted in the chair. Ellaeva had also mentioned the possibility that the Rahmyrrim might desire him married. How would his marriage assist the Velenese? It offered them no direct benefit, but some marriages would put him out of contention for the throne, which would ease Drault’s mind. Some might radically change his future course. He choked back a laugh. Besieged and kidnapped for a forced marriage? A beautiful maiden would make the better subject of such a plot. Then his mood darkened. It did explain Zaheva’s murder. Maybe Drault wasn’t involved after all? Or did the roots of this plot go much deeper and farther than he originally suspected?

  “None of those things you mentioned will help me sleep at night.” His voice came out cold as frozen loch.

  “You don’t sleep at night anyway,” Everard said. “Not without a bellyfull of whisky. Nothing to do with your conscience. You just want a way out of the misery you’ve tried to escape at the bottom of a bottle.”

  Lyram tightened his fingers on the whisky glass, then very deliberately set the tumbler down out of harm’s way. “My reasons are my own. This is my choice, and you can’t stop me.”

  “My soldiers will, if I order them to.” The castellan stood, his hand on the hilt of the sword he only recently started wearing.

  “Your soldiers won’t let you surrender, if they know that’s what you intend to do,” Everard said. “They adore you and won’t place their lives before yours.”

  Lyram surged to his feet, seizing the clan sword from the table. “Do I need to lock the pair of you in here until it’s done?”

  The door banged open, startling him. Ellaeva stood in the doorway, gripping her basket-hilted sword and her face set in the grim expression of death’s left hand ready to dispense justice. Not even a hint of the lonely, burdened girl remained in her visage—only the uncompromising granite her job demanded of her.

  “You will not go.” Her voice brooked no argument. “If I must take steps to keep you here, I will. Don’t think you can cross Ahura and get away with it.”

  The castellan’s bushy grey eyebrows climbed his brow. Everard settled back against the wall, his arms folded across his chest and a smug look on his face.

  “There are women and children here.” Heat threaded through Lyram’s words, growing with each syllable. “Lives might be saved if I surrender myself. How can one life be worth more than the lives of hundreds?”

  “When hundreds more—thousands even—hang on the fate of that one. You are my charge and my responsibility, and they are not. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it has to be.”

  Creature of logic that she was, no appeal to the heart would ever sway her. “You wouldn’t dare stop me.”

  “Don’t tempt me.” She swung her arm to point at the castellan “You can go.”

  Janun rose to his feet, his gaze on that pointing finger, as though she might choose to strike him down on a whim. He hurried from the room like it wasn’t his own castle.

  Ellaeva shoved the door closed behind him, and the sound of his footsteps receded. She fixed Lyram with a glare chilly enough to raise frost. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking your personal desires are more important than the sacred trust given to me by my goddess. I am charged to keep you safe and out of the Rahmyrrim’s clutches, and that is what I will do.”

  “This siege is not related to the Rahmyrrim.”

  “No? I’ll believe that when a dragon lies down in the field with a sheep.”

  “I gather they didn’t give you a heart in the temple.” Bitter anger spilled out with the words.

  Ellaeva met his gaze without faltering, but she blinked a few times in quick succession. “Many resent those who make the hard choices they cannot.”

  She spun on her heel, yanked the door open with unnecessary force, and departed in a billow of black robes.

  The door slammed behind her with the finality of a tomb closing, leaving him smarting from her censure.

  “Well done, sir.” Everard raked him with a scornful look and applauded slowly. “I advised you not to allow yourself to feel for her, and I do believe you’ve succeeded most admirably.”

  And with that stinging rebuke, his aide bustled from the room in Ellaeva’s wake.

  Lyram dropped back into his chair, restlessly turning the glass around and around again. Was I too hard on her? But how could he put his life before those of his household? The problem seemed insurmountable, and it gnawed at his soul like a wyvern worrying a bone. Then again, only a few hours ago he’d commiserated with her about how those who judged her were short-sighted for not understanding that tough decisions needed to be made. He’d made those choices himself. Was this really the easy way out? Trying to think it through only made his head throb. In a fit of pique, he snatched up the tumbler and hurled it against the wall.

  The glass shattered. Whisky dripped down on the carpet in a soft patter, while Lyram sat and contemplated the value of a soul.

  Lyram lurked behind the battlements of the western wall, several yards short of the front gate towers. Farther down the wall, centred on the gatehouse, Ellaeva leaned through a crenel above the gate to call down to Sayella, flanked by Everard and Galdron. By peering between the merlons, he could see the Gallowglaigh captain at the edge of the moat, resplendent today in a blue waistcoat and astride a massive white destrier, but she couldn’t see him.

  “Our answer is no,” Ellaeva said.

  Sayella fanned her face with her hat, blue with an indigo plume, though the day was not hot. She shouted up at the walls, “I would rather speak with Lord Aharris on the matter.”

  “I am the appointed spokesperson for Lord Aharris. Do you wish to question my authority?”

  “Of course not, your holiness.” At this distance it was impossible to discern Sayella’s oily smile, but it oozed in her voice, even at volume. “I must tell your holiness this is a very bad idea. We will take the castle, and Lord Aharris—by force if necessary. Your goddess cannot stop us.”

  “Ahura is not here to stop you.” Ellaeva curved her lips in a grim and bitter smile. “But I am, Captain Sayella. What you’ve heard about me might not be the truth, but it also isn’t far from it.”

  She turned and strode away from the battlements, gesturing Everard to her side, while Galdron stayed to marshal the defences.

  Lyram remained in the shadow of the wall. Below, Sayella yanked her horse’s head around with a vicious jerk and galloped off towards the old gate, the red flag of truce streaming behind her. Now that Sayella had her answer, would Ellaeva put the incident from mind? If so, and she stopped studying him like a wyvern crouched over an antelope, he might be able to sneak out to the camp and surrender himself. Then everyone in the castle would be free to carry on with their lives.

  A shadow darkened the battlements, there and gone in a moment, then another, as though two small clouds scudded quickly across the face of the sun. He glanced up, and stiffened.

  Five dragons coursed through the sky, wan sunlight glinting off their scales of red, bronze and copper, low enough to be
within arrowshot. A murmur ran down the wall, but no man lifted his bow. No man loosed an arrow at a dragon unless his life depended upon it.

  Lyram’s gaze turned towards the old gate, where a small cloud of dust hid the sentries stationed there. Either Sayella just rode through, or the mercenaries fought their horses after the close passage of the dragons.

  The first spring dragon was lucky—but a dragon over a battlefield was an omen of death. How, then, should he interpret this omen?

  If he surrendered himself to the enemy, did nothing but death await him? Or did the omen warn of the deaths he might cause if he went?

  And this field isn’t a battlefield today—it’s a field of parley.

  Still, the possibility this siege might be a Rahmyrrim ploy to turn the course of his life made him vaguely uneasy. What would playing into Rahmyr’s hands mean? Only the goddess of decay knew. But not surrendering himself almost certainly meant death, and worse, for most of those souls within this castle. And... it was Bradlin out there—wasn’t it? He’d be surrendering to Bradlin and Drault, not some Rahmyrrim necromancer.

  If I’m going to the trouble to sneak out to the camp and give myself up, maybe I should interrogate Bradlin first.... That half-recalled memory lingered, of Bradlin, in the snow, in a time and place he could not have been, should not have been. It haunted Lyram’s dreams, but he still had only that fragment—the face, framed by the bare branches of winter’s trees, against a snowy backdrop. Why had Bradlin been there? And where was there? Not to mention when. It wasn’t the only fragment of memory in his head, with so much fractured by copious amounts of whisky, but it was the only one that plagued him so.

  “There you are.”

  Lyram looked up from his position on the ground and fixed Ellaeva with a scowl. “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t do that anymore.”

  “We agreed no such thing.” She surveyed him with the same neutral expression she’d worn since overruling his wishes in the withdrawing room yesterday. “You asked it. I promised only to try.”