by David Weber
He paused, and Hathan cocked his head. He never would have expected Cassan to implicate Yeraghor in something like this!
“Manipulated, Milord? By whom?”
“I can’t be sure,” Cassan replied in that same unwilling tone, “but something his lady said in a letter to my wife struck me as...odd. I had my agents in the East Riding look into it very cautiously. Two of them seem to’ve disappeared without a trace. The third came to me with a tale I dearly wanted to disbelieve, but I fear he was right.”
The baron’s nostrils flared.
“There’s wizardry afoot in Ersok, Sir Hathan,” he said flatly. “I don’t believe Yeraghor realizes it, but I have conclusive evidence. I believe someone from outside the Kingdom—someone who knows all about my enmity for Tellian—has used sorcerous means to influence him. It was the last thing I wanted to believe, but when my agent reported that Yeraghor had actually dispatched assassins to murder the King, I couldn’t take the chance that he might be wrong.” Cassan’s shoulders sagged. “I turned out my armsmen and we rode as fast as we could. The whole way I was praying my agent was wrong, but these”—he waved wearily at the bodies of the dead mercenaries littering the ground—“look like exactly the assassins my agent described.”
“And what, precisely, do you suggest we do about it, Milord?” he asked harshly.
“The first step has to be to see to the King’s safety,” Cassan replied. “And after that, it must be the dispatch of Crown magi to Ersok to investigate and smell out any wizardry.”
He was clearly uncomfortable saying that—not surprisingly, Hathan thought, given his well-known hostility towards the magi.
“It’s the only way to be certain we know what’s truly happening,” the baron continued. “I’m almost certain Yeraghor doesn’t realize he’s being manipulated and controlled by someone else.”
He shook his head again, sadly, and moved a little closer to Gayrhalan. His warhorse was smaller than the towering courser, a fact Cassan would normally have bitterly resented and done everything he could to avoid acknowledging. Now he reached out and upward, laying one hand almost beseechingly on Hathan’s armored forearm.
“I’m almost certain of that,” he said softly, so softly Hathan had to lean towards him to hear him. “But I’m not positive. Gods, I wish I was! The truth is, I’m afraid he may realize exactly what he’s done, and if the Kingdom learns one of the four barons willingly resorted to the use of sorcery, the gods only know how it will react!”
Hathan nodded slowly, forced against his will to acknowledge Cassan’s point.
“It will be essential for Tellian and me to present a united front if that’s the case,” Cassan said, his expression bitter. “And I won’t pretend that thought pleases me one bit. But if the two of us stand together, the fact that we can’t agree on anything else in the world should at least cause the lords warden to accept that none of the other barons are dabbling in sorcery. And if it turns out Yeraghor is being manipulated unknowingly, or even against his will, it’s still going to take Tellian and me together to either keep it from becoming general knowledge or to deal with its repercussions when the truth leaks out.”
“I trust you won’t take this wrongly, Milord,” he said out loud, “but I think Baron Tellian—and the King—are going to want to see this evidence of yours about Yeraghor.”
“Of course they are.” Cassan gave a harsh chuckle. “If the position were reversed, I’d certainly want to see it. It’ll take some time to assemble all of it, but I brought along a copy of my agent’s report.” He took his hand from Hathan’s forearm and reached for his belt pouch. “I think the best thing to do at this point is for me to keep my armsmen safely outside the wall while you take the report back to the King and show it to him and Tellian. Once they’ve had a chance to look at it, then—”
The hand reaching for his belt pouch darted suddenly to one side. It closed on the hilt of a dagger, and before Hathan could react, the dagger came out of its sheath, drove in through the open visor of his helmet and thrust through his left eye socket into his brain.
Gayrhalan was as surprised as his rider. His head swung to the side, trying to bat the dagger aside before it could thrust home, but he was too late. Cassan and his armsmen had planned quickly but carefully on the ride to meet the King’s envoy, and in the instant the courser was totally focused on Cassan, Tarmahk Dirkson flexed his right hand. The short bladed dagger in the spring-loaded sheath strapped to his forearm snapped into his hand and he lunged in a single supple movement. The blade went home, stabbing through the eye opening in Gayrhalan’s steel plate chamfron.
A heartbeat after Hathan stiffened and started to slide from the saddle, Gayrhalan collapsed under him.
“Treason!” Cassan screamed, wheeling his horse back towards his shocked armsmen. “Treachery! They’ve killed the King!”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Hathan!”
The agonized cry burst from Tellian Bowmaster as Dathgar and Gayrfressa felt Gayrhalan’s death. The coursers echoed the helpless protest, screaming their rage, and Leeana tasted blood as her teeth sank into her lip.
She and her father stared at one another, each feeling the other’s pain. It was all they could do for what seemed like an eternity, but then Tellian gave himself a savage shake and turned to the King.
“Hathan is dead,” he said in a voice of hammered iron. “So is Gayrhalan. Cassan murdered them both.”
Markhos’ face turned to stone.
“How?” he demanded.
“Cassan,” Tellian spat. “Cassan spun a tale about Yeraghor being behind all this—spun it well enough even I might have believed there was some truth in it. He offered to show Hathan ‘proof’...and then put a dagger through his eye. He’s mine, Markhos—mine! This time I’ll have his blood!”
“This time you’ll have his blood, Milord,” Markhos promised. King and baron gazed into one another’s eyes for a long, icy moment, and then Markhos smiled humorlessly. “Of course, first we both have to live long enough for you to collect it.”
* * *
Cassan thundered back to Stoneblade and Horsemaster, then drew rein so hard his horse half-crouched, skidding on its rear hooves. Both captains stared at him, eyes stunned, and he pointed back at the fallen courser and wind rider.
“The bastards have killed the King!” he snarled.
“Are you sure of that, Milord?” Stoneblade demanded, his expression shocked.
“Sure of it?!” Cassan looked at him incredulously. “The son of a whore admitted it to me!”
“He admitted it?”
Cassan gripped his reins fiercely, battling his own impatience. But he had to handle this carefully. He had to carry Stoneblade—and all of his armsmen—with him if he meant to succeed.
“Not at first,” he said harshly. “At first, he insisted the King was well. You saw us talking! He said the King was suspicious of our ‘timely’ arrival—that was why he’d been sent out to find out who we were, why we were here. He wasn’t happy to see me, I assure you! But he pretended he was...at least until I suggested the King would be safer out here. That was when he told me he’d been instructed by the King to invite me int
o the lodge to ‘confer’ with him and Tellian. Look at that smoke, those fires! D’you really think the King would invite me into the middle of all that instead of getting out of it himself as quickly as possible?! Besides, he insisted the King had invited me by name...after admitting he’d been sent to find out who we were! It was ridiculous!”
He spat on the ground.
“I told him that with the hunting lodge burning down around the King’s ears, it would be far better to get him safely out of it, and that’s when he started getting evasive. He came up with one excuse after another, every one of them thinner than the one before. So I told him I needed some assurance—some proof—the King was still well and in control of his own fate. That’s when he cursed me and reached for his sword. It was only the gods’ own grace I’d been suspicious enough to see it coming! I couldn’t reach my saber in time, but I got my dagger into his helmet before he could clear the scabbard. And somehow Tarmahk managed to drop the courser before he could take my arm off with his jaws.”
Stoneblade’s eyes were narrow, and he looked at Horsemaster.
The junior captain had been staring at Cassan. Now he looked at his fellow armsman, his brain racing. Silence hovered for a moment, and then Horsemaster drew a deep breath.
“I saw Hathan reach for his sword,” he said softly.
Cassan’s expression never altered, but triumph flooded through him. He hadn’t dared hope Horsemaster would commit himself, and he wondered how much of it was an armsman’s loyalty and how much was cold calculation. Horsemaster must realize that by the simple fact of being here, suspicion must attach to him and Stoneblade if their liege was proven a traitor. Loyalty to his baron would be a thin defense against the charge of regicide, even among the Sothōii, but if Cassan was in a position to control the story emerging from this day’s work...
Stoneblade’s expression was still shaken, but his eyes hardened and he looked back at Cassan.
“Your orders, Milord?” he asked crisply.
* * *
Leeana’s hands were rock steady as she nocked an arrow to her string once more, but tears trickled down her cheeks. Hathan had been a part of her life since she’d learned to walk—her father’s closest friend, her personal armsman’s cousin, her own adoptive uncle. A man of unyielding honor, the very shieldarm he’d been named. A man Cassan of Frahmahn could never have defeated in battle...murdered by a coward and traitor, and his wind brother with him.
She felt Gayrfressa’s rage and grief melding with her own, but the mare wasn’t with her. She and Dathgar—and Tellian—had circled around behind the still blazing main lodge despite the smoke and the heat. It was bad enough for the humans; it was far worse for someone with a courser’s senses, and Gayrfressa lacked the barding which had protected Dathgar from flying cinders. Now the coursers waited, shrouded in blinding, choking smoke and surrounded by roaring flame. Any normal horse would have been overcome by the smoke, even assuming it hadn’t been driven mad with panic, but Dathgar and Gayrfressa weren’t horses. They closed their eyes, enduring, drawing on their link to the energy which sustained the entire world, and somehow they bore it.
Leeana didn’t know how. Even with her link to Gayrfressa, she couldn’t understand how the coursers could do it, but they did, and she blinked her own eyes furiously clear of tears as bugles sounded outside the lodge once more.
* * *
The warhorses were skittish.
No, Cassan thought, they were far worse than that—they were half-panicked, and he knew Stoneblade had been right. It would have been far better to dismount his armsmen and take them in on foot. However little they might care for the prospect of fighting on their own feet, his men would have found it enormously easier than trying to control warhorses who were terrified by the smell of smoke and the roar of flames. And it would have been far easier to control them, as well.
Which was why Cassan had insisted on a mounted charge. He wanted—needed—as much confusion as he could possibly get. All of the King’s guards had to die in the melee, and the chaos would cover Dirkson and his squad as they made sure Markhos himself was dead.
He could hardly explain all of that to Stoneblade, of course. Instead, he’d pointed out that they didn’t know for certain the King was dead. He might simply be a prisoner...so far, at least. And if that was the case, they had to break in and settle this as quickly as humanly possible, before a desperate Tellian did kill his captive.
It was a risky argument, in some ways, but it was a pretext with which Stoneblade was unable to quibble. The armsman remained manifestly unhappy about his baron’s choice of tactics, but he could scarcely argue with Cassan’s motives. Nor could he dispute Cassan’s insistence that even if they were to lose half their men, it would be a bargain price if they got King Markhos back alive.
And if there are any inconvenient little problems, I’m sure I can count on Tarmahk to see to it that Stoneblade isn’t around to become one of them, the baron thought grimly. That, too, would be a bargain price if it came to it.
Even with Stoneblade’s acquiescence, it had taken longer than he liked. Not that it had actually taken as long as it had seemed to, he told himself, and—
The bugles sounded.
“For the King!”
* * *
“Here it comes!” Swordshank shouted. “Ready lads!”
Leeana recognized the bugle call, and she shook her head. Much as she respected her father, she’d questioned his sanity when he predicted Cassan would attack mounted. How could any Sothōii be stupid enough to drive horses into something like this?!
But they were doing it, and her jaw tightened as she raised her bow. It was going to be ugly.
Swordshank had put his surviving armsmen to work even before Hathan rode out to his death. They’d dragged every obstacle they could find in the smothering smoke out into the courtyard, littering the area in front of them with blocks of stone levered loose from the veranda’s steps, wheelbarrows from the groundskeeper’s storage shed, picks and shovels, firewood, even blazing roof beams dragged out of the inferno. Leeana’s hair was even more badly singed and scorched from helping them, but Swordshank had harshly ordered her away when they started moving the burning timbers. Unlike the armsmen’s armored gauntlets, she had only riding gloves, and she’d burned her left hand badly before Swordshank realized what she was doing. Fortunately, it was the back of it she’d damaged. Using it hurt, but she could still grip, and she settled herself firmly as the oncoming hooves thundered through the wide-open gate.
The smoke was thinner than it had been, and she and the defenders had the advantage of familiarity with the lodge’s ruins. They didn’t have to look for their enemies—they knew where they had to be, and the first volley of arrows was fired almost before they saw their targets.
* * *
Horses screamed as the arrows drove into them.
However wide the gate in that wall might be, putting a cavalry charge through it was like trying to thread a needle with an anchor hawser. The galloping column of horses, all of them already half maddened by the smell of smoke, was squeezed together. Over a score of warhorses peeled away from the column, completely refusing to pass through that narrow opening. Half a dozen more ran into the gate posts, or were crowded into them by their fellows and reeled aside with broken legs...or necks. But others got through, bursting into the courtyard, spreading out again, wheeling as their riders sought their enemies.
And as they wheeled, the arrows found them.
Cassan’s armsmen were armored; their horses were not, and Swordshank’s orders had been cold and brutally pragmatic. His armsmen wasted no arrows on targets protected by breastplates and boiled leather.
They shot at the horses.
Leeana tried to close her ears to the tortured screams of horses riven and torn by arrowfire. They couldn’t understand what was happening, and she wished she couldn’t, either. Wished those screams wouldn’t come back to her in nightmares. Wished she hadn’t been forced to m
urder innocents rather than the traitors on those horses’ backs.
Yet even through her tears, she picked her targets unflinchingly, and the entire front rank of Baron Cassan’s armsmen crashed down in ruin.
* * *
The weight of fire astonished Cassan.
He’d been positive Markhos’ armsmen had to have taken heavy casualties against the mercenaries, and he’d known they no longer had any buildings to use for cover. What kind of lunatics would stand in the open and try to use bow fire to break a cavalry charge?!
Yet that was precisely what they’d done...and it worked.
Less than half the horses who went down were actually hit by arrows. The others crashed into their dead or wounded fellows, falling, spilling their riders, in all too many cases rolling over those riders and crushing them in their own collapse. Here and there, a handful made it through without being hit or falling over another horse—only to encounter the obstacles strewn in their path. Some of them reared, throwing their riders, squealing in panic as they found flames directly in their path. Others broke legs on wheelbarrows or heaps of firewood, invisible to them in the smoke until far too late.
Cassan swore viciously, watching as the attack slithered to a halt. It stalled in a drift of dead or screaming horses, and the column behind them packed itself solid, unable to advance, losing its momentum and wavering in confusion.
* * *
“Your Majesty!”
Leeana spun as Sir Jerhas Macebearer shouted. The Prime Councilor had claimed a fallen armsman’s bow to thicken the defensive fire, as had most of the surviving courtiers and servants, and positioned himself on one flank of their perilously short line. He stood to Leeana’s left and rear...in the last line before the King.
