But Halferan’s entire populace was relying on him, as surely as they had once relied on his dead lord and the guard troop who had died in the marshes.
Corrain was beginning to fear, very seriously, that he could not measure up to their expectations. Oh, he was confident that he could meet any one of these challenges; commanding the guard troop, taking charge of rebuilding the manor, even running the household once that was done, should Master Rauffe and his wife return to Licanin.
Though playing the part of Halferan’s baron remained a daunting prospect, he had bested the other noblemen in their parliament once, so as long as he stepped carefully, he should survive the next gathering.
But how was he to manage all these things, with so many constant and conflicting calls on his time? He could barely address one problem before a handful more came clamouring.
‘My lord baron,’ Fitrel prompted.
‘I will write to Baron Wanflest.’ Not that Corrain had any notion of how to frame such a letter.
Could Lady Zurenne advise him? She was currently sorting through the remnants of the barony’s archive back at Taw Ricks. Perhaps she would find something to guide them?
‘Yes, I know how feeble that sounds,’ Corrain snapped before the old sergeant could speak. ‘But it’s the first step to laying the matter before the Winter Solstice Parliament.’
By which time, those harvested crops would have been eaten or Wanflest would claim they had been lost to damp or rats.
‘No, my lord baron.’ Fitrel sounded as exasperated as he had been long years ago, whipping the callow Corrain into line. ‘On the eastern road!’
Corrain stood in his stirrups, unable to believe his eyes. ‘Get the troop down to the manor and see the horses watered and groomed,’ he ordered through gritted teeth.
Furious, he spurred his mount into a startled gallop. The three riders on the eastern road slowed, their horses shying at the chestnut thundering towards them. Two horses anyway. The donkey bringing up the rear regarded his approach with stubborn indifference.
‘What are you doing here?’ Corrain didn’t know who to berate first; Lady Ilysh or young Reven.
‘My place is by your side.’ For all her bold words, Ilysh sagged in her saddle.
‘Your place is at your lessons and heeding your lady mother!’ As hotly as Corrain spoke, his blood ran cold at the thought of this trio of fools unaccompanied on the road.
What would become of the barony if Ilysh were to be killed or worse? Little Esnina would be the next heiress and prey to all those claimants Corrain had only so recently faced down. There was no way under the sun, both moons and all the stars that those noble lords would stand for him and Zurenne contriving a second marriage of convenience.
‘My mother is no longer Lady Halferan.’ Ilysh’s defiance returned as she thrust a shaking finger toward the shattered buildings. ‘It is my duty to see my manor restored!’
That dramatic gesture provoked her ill-tempered grey mare into a buck that could have well unseated her if the beast hadn’t been so tired.
Reven’s firm hand was there in an instant. ‘My lady—’
The lad gasped, his words cut short. The gleaming point of Corrain’s sword pressed against his throat.
‘What were you going to do if you stumbled across a band of corsairs?’ he snarled. ‘Or freebooters from Attar or Claithe, prowling on the nod from Lord Karpis? You only carry one blade. Were you relying on Abiah to defend your open side?’
Though he supposed he should be grateful that one or other of these idiot children had appreciated the necessity of a chaperone.
Corrain’s hand shook as he remembered how he had also sworn never to honour Talagrin again until he saw the lad Hosh safe at his old mother’s fireside.
Reven yelped, but seeing the bloody scratch was no worse than a razor scrape, Corrain swallowed his impulse to apologise. That soreness could keep the lad mindful of the possible consequences of his folly.
He turned his anger on Ilysh. ‘How dare you defy your lady mother? She will be frantic with worry!’
At least until Lady Ilysh returned with a fitting escort. But that was a new thorn in Corrain’s shoe. He didn’t want to send Fitrel’s hard-pressed guard troop back to Taw Ricks. Once men and horses alike were rested, they must travel south to wave Halferan’s colours in Tallat faces.
Ilysh’s voice rose to something perilously close to a wail. ‘I left her a letter!’
‘My lord baron.’ Old Abiath spoke.
‘What have you to say for yourself?’ Corrain wasn’t about to spare the frail old woman, even for Hosh’s sake. For one thing, she looked the least travel-worn of the trio. Not so frail then, for all her slight stature and her shawl-wrapped grey head.
She ignored his question. ‘Look to the manor, Lord Halferan, and to the demesne men.’
Corrain wasn’t about to be distracted. ‘You can rest here till I can find you fresh horses. Then you’ll be on your way back to your mother.’
‘I won’t!’ Ilysh teetered on the brink of tears. ‘I am the lady of Halferan!’
‘You will. I am your husband and your liege lord and you will do as I command!’ Corrain reprimanded Ilysh as harshly any rebellious recruit to the guards’ ranks.
He couldn’t think what else to do. Corrain had no experience of dealing with barely blooded maidens, noble or common born. Truth be told, he had scant experience of living with women of any age. His mother had died labouring to deliver the babe who would have been his sister before he’d seen his tenth summer. When his father had died not long after, Fitrel had taken him in and the old sergeant-at-arms had lived his whole life unmarried. While Corrain had enjoyed plenty of female companionship, he generally left his lovers sleeping before their bed sheets had time to cool.
Those tears trickling down Ilysh’s cheeks unnerved him horribly.
‘Ca—’ Reven’s tongue stumbled in his anger. ‘My lord—’ His words were drowned out by rising cheers from the ransacked manor’s compound.
Corrain turned to see what was afoot, thankful for an excuse to pretend not to hear the boy’s insolence and not have to punish him for it.
He saw the work gangs had all halted, along with Fitrel’s guardsmen picketing their horses in the rough pasture along the brook.
The men were all hallooing. Some waved their shirts, stripped to save the linen from sweat and dirt. As he watched, he saw them realise that their lady had seen their greeting. They returned to their labours with alacrity, calling out encouragement to each other.
‘They’ll work all the harder for their lady’s sake,’ Abiath remarked, ‘and they’ll take it hard if you don’t trust them to keep her safe and comfortable here.’
‘Reven was only doing my bidding.’ Ilysh scrubbed the tears angrily from her face. ‘You cannot whip him on my account.’
Corrain would much rather deal with her angry than weeping but he wasn’t having that. ‘I will discipline my guardsmen as I see fit, my lady wife.’
Satisfied to see Ilysh bite her lip, he glared at Reven and jerked his head towards the picket lines between the manor and the brook.
‘Report to Sergeant Fitrel and see to your horse. I’ll deal with you later.’
Corrain took Ilysh’s bridle from Reven and felt the tremors of the grey mare’s exhaustion. ‘You’ve ridden this poor beast to her knees, you silly girl.’
‘You can’t—’ Ilysh bit her lip again as evidently she recalled Corrain could now speak to her exactly as he wished.
‘Abiath.’ He looked at the old woman. ‘Tell Master Rauffe to set up a tent for you and Lady Ilysh in the most sheltered spot he can find. Set up my own tent beside it.’
‘As you wish, my lord baron.’ With a look he had no hope of interpreting, she urged her donkey forward.
Corrain dismounted with a curt nod to Ilysh, gathering both horses’ reins in one hand. ‘We’ll walk.’
Ilysh opened her mouth, thought better of it, and slid from her saddle in a
flurry of dusty skirts and begrimed petticoats. As her boots reached the ground, her knees buckled.
Corrain barely managed to wrap his free arm around her waist to keep her from collapsing completely. ‘Didn’t you rest at all last night?’
‘We had to stop when the moons set.’ Ilysh wriggled free before thinking better of such independence and threading her hand through his elbow as a compromise.
Corrain could feel how heavily she was leaning on him and curbed his long stride to her maidenly pace. The horses were content to walk placidly behind them.
Ilysh heaved a sudden sigh.
‘What is it?’ Corrain asked warily.
‘All… that.’ Ilysh gestured helplessly at the devastation ahead.
Corrain was sorely tempted to sigh himself. ‘I know.’
‘Why won’t you let the wizards help us?’ Ilysh looked up and her hand went to the rune sigil pendant around her neck. ‘The Archmage has offered. He has already helped us. My mother, my sister and I would all be dead in a ditch if it wasn’t for Madam Jilseth’s wizardry.’
But the Tormalin magewoman Merenel had not come to give Ilysh her white raven lesson, as she had been supposed to, on that day when Corrain had returned to Taw Ricks, or since.
‘There are considerations you’re not aware of.’ Though Corrain couldn’t think how to explain his fear of wizardly retribution to the girl.
When would the Archmage demand that he answer for bringing that Mandarkin mage southwards? How much could he achieve for Halferan before that happened?
He cleared his throat. ‘You can rest here overnight, then—’
‘I swapped marriage vows with you at Drianon’s altar for the sake of keeping Halferan safe.’ Ilysh’s intense expression reminded Corrain irresistibly of his dead lord. ‘Why won’t you allow me a say in the barony’s future, when it’s my bloodline that makes you its lord? I know my father did something which my mother wishes to keep a secret and I believe it has to do with his appeals to Hadrumal but I’m not interested in such tangles. I want to see Halferan restored.’ Now she was pleading with him. ‘Why can’t the wizards help us?’
‘Because they have other concerns,’ Corrain said harshly.
By all that was sacred and profane, that was surely the truth. What was happening in the corsair’s anchorage? Was that why Merenel hadn’t returned?
He watched Abiath on her plodding donkey approaching the gatehouse ruins. What had become of her beloved Hosh?
All the questions besieging Corrain tormented him like gadflies.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Black Turtle Isle
In the domain of Nahik Jarir
HOSH RUBBED HIS eyes, gritty with lack of sleep. He glanced up at the sky, wondering how long it might be before the rain began to fall today.
‘Have you seen some omen?’ Anskal instantly demanded.
‘No.’ Hosh yawned so wide that he felt his jaw crackle.
‘Where are they?’ The Mandarkin’s patience was wearing ominously thin.
They had been sitting waiting since first light on the terrace by the kitchen steps of the pavilion formerly claimed by the Reef Eagle’s master. Even though Hosh had explained how long it would take Nifai to cross the island.
He could only trust that Anskal wouldn’t kill him now that the meeting the wizard had sought was so close. After all, the Mandarkin hadn’t skewered him with some bolt of lightning when he had finally returned to relay Imais’s message; Nifai would come when the stars offered him most protection and not a day before.
Perhaps it would help to remind him. ‘The Ruby has moved into the arc of Honour and joined the waxing Pearl. They’re with the stars of the Vizail Blossom for this one day. Those are all omens promising your good faith.’
Anskal’s sideways glance silenced Hosh more effectively than a slap in the face. The boy looked down at the ground below the terrace. He couldn’t read anything in the wizard’s hooded gaze, certainly not good faith.
But there were other stars which should surely persuade Nifai to run this risk. The Diamond had shifted into the arc of Death and now rode with the Amethyst for new inspiration with the Mirror Bird whose feathers supposedly turned magic back on those who used it. Two jewels in each of those arcs made for a powerful portent, all the more so with the Opal for truth waning in the arc of Foes, tangled in the stars of the Net.
As long as Nifai hadn’t seen some other omen to dissuade him. Seeing a mothbird in the daytime. Seeing a spider’s web between two trees of different kinds. A pattern of crosses left on the sand at low tide. A lamp flame dividing into two, if any of the fugitive corsairs had such a thing to light their nights. And those were only some of the portents promising bad luck. Hosh didn’t doubt that the Aldabreshi had a handful more for each one he knew of.
He looked up again as he heard rustling leaves. There couldn’t be anything large enough left uneaten on the island for that to be an omen. It must be Nifai.
As he saw the overseer appear amid the undergrowth now choking the path through the ironwood trees, Hosh froze. Ducah had come with the overseer.
He was an Archipelagan straight out of a mainlander’s nightmares. Half a head taller than even Corrain, he was the tallest man whom Hosh had ever encountered and far more heavily muscled than the wrestlers who travelled Caladhria’s markets and festivals. He had overseen Reef Eagle’s master’s affairs here ashore whenever the raiding vessel was voyaging.
His ebony back was ridged with whip scars. Ducah never sought to hide them, going bare-chested however cold and insistent the rain. So everyone could marvel at the strength that had seen him survive such a flogging. They could wonder in awed whispers what feats he must have accomplished to escape an oar slave’s chains and rise to such a privileged position.
Hosh reckoned that the villain judged a day when he didn’t kill someone was a day wasted. The slightest provocation, or often none that Hosh had seen, ended with Ducah’s curved blade slicing off someone’s head or hooking out their entrails.
Yet now, the instant the brute saw Hosh and the wizard waiting, he balked like a packhorse scared by some shadow. That was hardly good news. If Ducah was terrified, his first instinct would surely be to lash out with the swords thrust through the sashes wound around his hips.
Hosh fought not to touch his arm ring for reassurance, settling for a silent prayer that it would truly save him from one last glimpse of the damp earth coming up to meet him as Ducah’s blade swept his head from his shoulders.
But who should he pray to? Hosh realised with a shock that his mother had never spoken of any god or goddess having an interest in magecraft.
If Ducah could have been a wrestler, Nifai had the build of a runner likely to win prizes in every festival’s foot races. He betrayed less obvious nervousness, though he kept fiddling with the four large pearls he wore in each ear. Hosh could see the last holes still bleeding where the overseer had driven the silver hooks through his lobes that very morning.
His coppery forearms were weighed down with mismatched silver and gold bracelets all studded with lesser pearls which skilled craftsmen had halved on account of some flaw. These were highly prized here at this northern end of the Archipelago, as far as it was possible to get from the pearl reefs of the most remote south.
Ducah wore ropes of pearls around his neck, a double handful of strands iridescent against his dark chest.
Anskal smiled broadly. Hosh guessed he was pleased to see such proof that the corsairs had indeed fled with a good haul of their loot. He would have no idea of their trust in the pearls’ talismanic properties.
‘Good day to you.’
The Mandarkin spoke in his strongly accented Tormalin. Nifai looked guardedly at Hosh, who saw that though the Archipelagan had understood, he had no intention of answering.
Ducah’s expression was too thunderous for Hosh to tell if he had understood Anskal or not. His lip curled on the brink of a sneer as a gust of the shifting breeze from the sea carried the rank
stink of Anskal’s unwashed body to them. Like all the Archipelagans, the corsair was scrupulous about his personal cleanliness.
Hosh didn’t imagine he was impressed by Anskal’s yellow tunic either, or his gauzy white trews embroidered down the side seams with scarlet sprays of vine blossoms. Hosh guessed that the garments had been sewn for some corsair’s whore but he’d kept his mouth shut about that.
The Mandarkin mage pursed his lips as though coming to some conclusion. ‘I do not speak your tongue and I have no magic to do so,’ he said to Nifai. ‘That is the privilege of the Mountain enchanters.’
Nifai looked helplessly at Hosh, lost as to the wizard’s meaning, for all that he understood the words.
Hosh quailed at the thought of trying to explain whatever it was called. Artifice? Aetheric magic? He had barely believed half the tales tossed around the barrack hall, of adepts speaking to each other across a thousand leagues and seeing through each other’s eyes. Corrain had dismissed all the stories as nonsense.
Then again, Hosh had barely believed in wizardry until he’d seen Master Minelas’s murderous spells and Corrain had been proved so wrong about so many aspects of Aldabreshin life.
He cleared his throat. ‘There are different magics on the mainland. Master Anskal is only master of one.’
‘Then we will speak as the broken-face slave does,’ Nifai said warily. ‘He can help us understand each other.’
Anskal looked up as the first drops of rain pattered onto the terrace’s stones. For one appalling moment, Hosh though he was about to ward off the shower with some sorcery. If he did, this meeting was over before it had begun.
Instead the Mandarkin mage gestured first to the steps and then to the pavilion’s broad eaves overhanging the terrace. ‘I would offer you shelter. I would offer you food but Hosh says that my touch would taint it for you. Still, the boy brought those up from the cellar. I have not touched them.’
He gestured with his filthy hand towards a basket of wax-sealed bottles.
Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) Page 13
