“Now! The effect will wear off soon!” Torvul scampered down the stairs, moving as fast as Allystaire’d ever seen. Torvul crouched among the downed men, searching for something for a few seconds, before finally shaking his head and moving on.
Allystaire waved the woman and the sorcerer’s apprentice down the stairs before him, then bounded down two at a time, his bare feet slapping hard against the stone.
They passed the heap of blinded, yelling soldiers and guardsman without a backward glance, and had reached the wide and ancient oak gates of the keep’s outer wall when a voice of command suddenly rolled over them.
“Where do you think you’re going, Coldbourne?”
Allystaire whirled, giving his hammer a tentative swing, and saw Baron Delondeur, clearly just roused from sleep but carrying a naked sword, with a pair of knights at his side. The Baron wore a green silk nightshirt with his sigil, the sand-colored tower, patterned all over it. He looked faintly ridiculous with his swordbelt cinched around him, Allystaire thought, but his voice was hard, his eyes were clear, and his thick-wristed arm held his sword with casual ease.
“I am forced to refuse your hospitality, Lionel,” Allystaire said, “but I do not wish to destroy your home in the process.”
“You up-jumped mountain simpleton,” Delondeur spat, “you’ve destroyed nothing. You won’t make it out of the city.”
“I think you are about to have greater problems than what to do about me, Lionel,” Allystaire replied. As if it were a cue, Idgen Marte took a couple of steps forward, ready to launch herself towards the Baron, but Allystaire stopped her with a sudden thought.
No. Not like this. It cannot look like an assassin in the night. It has to look clean.
He’s right, Torvul added. If he’s killed by a blurry shadow, we’re no better than murderers as far as the regular folk will see.
“What problems are those?”
“As I see it, there are two,” Allystaire replied. “The first is that too many of your men, your good, loyal, seasoned men, now know what you were doing here. One of them is damned unhappy about it, too. The second—how will the sorcerers react when they know that one of their own died in your keep, under your care?”
“You can’t kill a sorcerer!” Lionel’s voice was steady, but his mouth tightened, his lips twitched nervously.
“I already have,” Allystaire said, lifting his chin. “Your sorcerer, your diviner of secrets, the weapon that would win you a throne, lies dead upon the floor of your dungeon. If you doubt me, send a man to find his decrepit corpse. I am afraid we cannot wait.”
The Baron’s eyes widened, and after a swallow, he pressed on. “Even on your best day you’d never have been able to kill a sorcerer. You’re lying.”
Allystaire laughed hollowly. “You know that I cannot, Lionel. And when his brethren come and ask what happened, you tell them the truth as I tell it to you now. Tell them it was me, the Arm of the Mother. I was unarmed, naked, and bound, before I took his magic. Tell them his bones turned into powder at a touch when the Mother was done with him.” Allystaire paused, felt his rage swelling in his throat. “Then tell them where to find me. I will await their coming, and I will be neither alone nor unarmed.”
“There are too many guards between you and the gates of my city, Coldbourne,” the Baron replied, though his face had paled noticeably and the sword in his hand shook, but the uncertainty passed in a moment, replaced with his casual military swagger. “Even if you make the wall of the Dunes, you’ll get no further.”
“Why, Lionel,” Allystaire said, “one would almost think you were afraid to face me yourself, with that kind of talk.”
“Don’t try to goad me, Coldbourne. You know me better than that.”
“No,” Allystaire replied. “I knew you.” Whatever he’d been about to add was interrupted by the clatter of footsteps as the conflicting parties of guards raced towards the gate, with Chaddin’s hardened bunch in the lead.
“M’lord! Guard yourself from mutineers,” came a shout from Leoben. The knight was suddenly silenced as one of Chaddin’s soldiers—a broad and thick-waisted man taller than the Baron—turned and drove a mailed fist into his face. This set off a general scuffle between guardsmen and knights, mostly conducted with fists and elbows, hilts and blade flats. No blood was drawn, though surely it would have been had Delondeur not whirled on them and bellowed, almost wordlessly. A lifetime of shouting orders in the field gave his voice the unmistakable note of command, and the men stopped and snapped to attention.
“What is the meaning of this? Why do my own men fight? Why has one of my own knights had his nose bloodied by a man-at-arms?”
“There are accusations, my lord, that must be answered,” Chaddin said, his voice and fair features barely concealing his anger.
“I must answer nothing,” the Baron shot back, imperiously. “Especially not accusations leveled by the soldiers in my service.”
Allystaire’s eyes flitted from Chaddin to the Baron and back, and something suddenly fell into place, and before he knew it, he was speaking aloud.
“He is your natural son,” he said, lifting his hammer to point to Chaddin. “He is, Lionel, do not deny it. He has the Delondeur features.”
Chaddin’s jaw tensed, and he defiantly kept his eyes locked on the Baron. Conspicuously he did not look at Allystaire, but he didn’t have to. As soon as the words were spoken aloud, the entire crowd in the entrance of the courtyard realized the truth of the paladin’s words; in many ways Chaddin was a young mirror image of the Baron. Before the Baron could deflect or defend himself, Allystaire pressed on.
“How long have you kept him under your thumb, kept him thinking that someday you will acknowledge the truth he wears on his face, in his eyes, his hair?” Then, a knot of anger growing in his stomach, he added, “His accusations will not do because he is what, a sign of your own inadequacies? Your own lack of will? Because you deny his parentage, his word is worth less than the words of that coward?” The paladin pointed to the knight, Sir Leoben, who was probing carefully along his split lip with his fingertips.
Leoben suddenly flushed and began to draw his sword. “I will not be called coward, sir. I demand—”
“If you finish that demand, you will die like the guard of Lionel’s slave pen did,” Allystaire said, “pinned against the wall like a tanning hide. Silence yourself now or be silenced forever. Choose.” The paladin fixed Leoben with his clear blue gaze. He was still blood-spattered, much of it drying to a dark brown upon his skin, and he hefted his hammer speculatively. In his mind, Allystaire was already lining up the throw.
Leoben matched Allystaire’s stare for a moment, but his brown eyes wavered and then lowered. He swallowed once, then slipped his sword back into its sheath.
Allystaire pointed to the woman huddling behind Torvul. “What of her? A woman of your own barony, taken by reavers, sold into slavery, and bought with Baron’s gold,” he shouted. “Thrown upon a table to be butchered by the sorcerer the Baron hired. This is the man you are taking orders from—no better than the commonest reaver!”
“Still your mad ravings,” the Baron roared, turning to Allystaire and lifting his sword.
“If you deny it, then attack me, and prove your innocence upon my person,” Allystaire said. He spread his arms wide. “Neither of us are armored, and I have just spent the day being tortured by your pet sorcerer. That ought to even us for your advanced age.”
That, it appeared, was enough, for the Baron roared and leaped to attack. Allystaire swung the haft of his warhammer so that the base of its shaft thunked into his left palm and he used it like a staff to ward off the blows Lionel leveled at him.
Age had taken little from the Baron as a swordsman, his swings as strong and fast as many a younger man’s. Allystaire was never the swordsman Lionel had been, but he didn’t intend the fight to last long. A vestige of the God
dess’s strength lingered. It will be enough.
He pushed the Baron, with enough force to send the old man staggering to one knee. Allystaire lowered his hands to the bottom third of his hammer, keeping them a few inches apart, ready to swing in a wide arc.
Lionel noted the change and began circling, shuffling his feet, shifting his weight. Both the Delondeur men and Allystaire’s own party instinctively gathered in semi-circles to either side of the combatants.
His sword held in his right hand, Lionel lunged. He was a tall man, with long arms and legs, and his lunge was fast, impressive, and hard to defend for a man not wearing armor.
Allystaire didn’t try to meet it with his hammer. Instead, he simply turned his body and let the blade score across his ribs as he stepped forward. The pain was a sizzling line across his flesh, but he had drawn close enough to the Baron to do precisely what he wanted.
When his left hand closed on the Baron’s shirt, the paladin lifted him off the ground, turned, and ran a few steps, till the older man’s body slammed into the outer wall. Allystaire slammed him once, then twice more, till the sword fell from his fingers. Then he dropped his hammer to the stones, and wrapped the fingers of his right hand around the Baron’s wrist, as it dove for the dirk belted opposite his empty scabbard.
He squeezed, just a bit, and felt bones creak, saw Lionel’s eyes water. For a moment, Allystaire felt a pang of guilt. The Baron’s age had made this fight a charade when compared to Allystaire’s strength.
Then he remembered the sight of the bloodstained table in the dungeon, the stink of fear in the slaver’s warehouse in Bend, the misery that he’d followed like a determined dog for all these months. He remembered the indignation of a little girl he’d found huddled and freezing in the cold well of her father’s inn when she learned, for the first time, that her lands were ruled by a Baron who simply did not care for the weakest of his people. Who simply did not care for her, her parents, or any of the folk of her village.
His hand tightened till a bone in the Baron’s wrist popped under his fingers. He stopped himself from turning the man’s arm into a limp tube of bone fragments, shredded muscle, and agony.
“Tell all of us, Lionel. Raise your voice so your men can hear. You know slavers operate in your barony, and you profited from it, yes?”
Through pain-gritted teeth the man grated, “Yes.”
“You even bought some of the captives, yes?”
“Yes!”
“And some of them came here, to the Dunes. And you never saw them again, because Bhimanzir was murdering them by ripping their vitals out with hooks and barbed knives. You may not have known that, but you knew when you gave him a woman that she was going to die. Did you not?”
The Baron clenched his teeth and strained his jaw, trying to twist out of the paladin’s grip to no avail. The two knights who had walked at his side suddenly leapt forward, swords in hands, but Idgen Marte darted between them. There was a heavy smack of metal against flesh and bone, and they dropped their swords from nerveless fingers as she retreated back into the shadows.
“Say it, Lionel. You were putting your own people on a sorcerer’s table for slaughter in order to help your aims. To found your kingdom. I will tire of asking, Baron,” Allystaire said, increasing the pressure around his wrist, “then I will tire of letting you live.” He worked hard to keep the easy confidence in his voice, for he felt blood beginning to stick the tabard he wore to his skin, felt the strength slowly draining from his limbs, which began to ache from the effort of holding the Baron against the wall. This needed to end soon.
“I knew. They were sacrifices for their barony, for their lords. They couldn’t be soldiers, but they could do this. Bhimanzir promised victory; his kind have never been defeated. He needed flesh, mothers, he told me. They were my people! Bound to serve me, and they did!”
Allystaire let the Baron drop in a heap, disgust rising in equal measure as anger. “My people, Baron, does not mean the same thing as my sword, or my boots, or even my horse. It does not mean that they serve you. It should mean that you. Serve. Them.” He turned to the soldiers behind him; they looked angry, in the main. Most of the anger, it seemed, was aimed at the man slumped on the ground, holding his fractured wrist. Hands tightened around swords, but did not draw them. Jaws quivered with tension, eyes flared. None seemed willing to challenge the paladin.
“You heard it from his own mouth, Chaddin. You are a sensible man. Take charge of him. We are leaving. We will kill any man we see in green between here and the gate. Aye?”
The blond sergeant stepped forward, his sword level, not pointed at Allystaire, but not pointed at Lionel either—thought it wavered in the direction of the Baron. He swallowed once, and said, “I will send word to the gates between here and there. You will not be harmed.”
“How will word go ahead of us? No. I need more than word.”
Chaddin strode forward and squatted at the nearly unconscious Baron’s side, then seized his hand. Lionel tried, weakly, to pull away. The sergeant, his son, held fast and quickly pried something free. He came to Allystaire, holding out his hand. In it sat a heavy golden ring set with stones that glittered darkly green in the guttering torchlight.
Allystaire took it, glanced at it briefly, and held it to Torvul. His arm shook, very slightly, as he extended it. Hope no one noticed that.
“This will come back, Chaddin. You have my word on it. I will leave it with the guard at the outer wall.” As Allystaire and company turned for the last set of stairs that would lead to the castle exit, he heard Chaddin begin to speak to the men. Knight’s voices raised and quickly shouted down. He slid his left hand under his tabard, wincing as it felt blood and the slash across his stomach. He reached for the compassion, the love of the Goddess, to heal himself. He almost fainted with the effort of it. It felt like trying to draw the foundation stone of a tower out of the earth with his bare hands. It shifted, but only just. Blood crusted and dried under his hand. There would be a scar.
Chapter 6
The Distraction
No sooner had they made their way outside than Idgen Marte gave Torvul a nod. The dwarf produced a potion, threw it high in the air. Before it hit the zenith of its arc, it burst into a long, streaming green flare.
“Is that to tell every damned guard in the city where we are?” Allystaire asked incredulously.
“They’ll already know that. No—it’s somethin’ she cooked up,” he said, pointing a thick finger at Idgen Marte. “I suggest we go to ground for a bit t’see if it works.”
* * *
Tibult had been lurking around the edges of the massive crowd of soldiers at the small north and east gate. An impromptu tent city had sprung up, as it always did, and even with just a few turns till dawn, ale-sellers and wine-carts and tents selling food, companionship, and trinkets were too full of customers to consider closing.
The men gathered here would likely be heading up towards the Ash river, to fisheries and mills and ferries, though a few might be making for the far northern reaches of the coast. At the main eastern gate, better than a mile to the south, men massed in anticipation of heading out into Delondeur’s central plain and the lee of the Thasryach mountains.
This gate’s camp was the third he’d managed to visit in the turns since they’d sent him on his way with more gold in his purse than he had ever counted on seeing. With a few drops of the dwarf’s potion in him, he’d almost been able to walk without a limp, though he sensed he’d pay for it tomorrow.
It had been easy to fall into the rhythms of soldier’s speech again, even if he’d not been one for nearly ten years now. And it hadn’t been hard to spread the rumors, especially since he’d been willing to stand his rounds.
A soldier about to go home for the winter would listen to anything from a man standing a round.
“Look at how early the season ended,” he was saying even now to
a group of men whose green cloaks showed the Delondeur tower backed by shovels and broadaxes—sappers and pioneers. “It’s a feint. I’m tellin’ ya,” Tibult said, finding himself moving into the role as he took a sip of his own too-new, too-sour ale. “The city is t’be sealed. Leave home is bein’ revoked, and the season is goin’ right up t’winter, if not into it. When the signal comes, any man still in the city is goin’ back out on campaign.”
“Where’d ya hear that?” One of the pioneers, a burly and bearded man with fists so large his ale-cup nearly disappeared in one, leaned forward over the brazier they shared.
“I heard it from my old mate, a quartermaster with Thryft’s lot,” Tibult said. “He got his manifests and they had him drawin’ supplies through winter.”
“What’s this signal then?” The burly pioneer spat into the brazier, turning his cup around and around in one hand.
“Froze if I know,” Tibult started to say, but then there was a general commotion and men scrambling out of their seats and tents.
At the far northwestern corner of the city, a bright green flare blazed across the sky. Every man in the camp froze in place to watch it.
Tibult gulped down the last of his ale and bellowed, “There it is! They’ll be closing the gates against us now! Any man still in the city at dawn is in for a winter campaign!”
There were few words more hated by barony soldiers, armsmen, and knights than “winter campaign,” Tibult well knew. The freeze could start mere weeks after summer and last for six months. Men could die at their post, horses at their picket. He’d frozen through more than one truly horrid barony winter himself.
So he was not at all surprised when the hundreds of homesick men took only moments to stitch the rumors he’d spread together into a cloak of fear that settled over all their shoulders, all at once.
As one, as if a knight himself had barked the orders, the men turned towards the distant gate, seizing up weapons and ropes, and charged like they were taking an enemy’s fortress.
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