“Sound the retreat,” Prestimion called.
Just as the signal to withdraw went out, Abrigant came running up alongside him. “The Zimroel army is coming!” the boy said, panting.
“Now? Where have they been all this while?”
“Gaviundar misunderstood. He thought you would not want him until after the cavalry had gone into action. And Gaviad—”
Prestimion scowled and shook his head. “Never mind. I’ve already called retreat. Get you to safety, boy. We’re done for here.”
8
A sudden nasty disturbance of some sort was going on in the corridor outside the High Counsellor Farquanor’s office in the Pinitor Court. The High Counsellor, looking up in annoyance at this interruption of his work, heard the clacking of boots against the stone floor of the hallway, blustering angry shouts, the clatter of running feet coming from several directions. Then an astonishingly familiar voice rose above the melee, an impossible voice, loud and raucous and harsh, crying out, “Easy, there, easy! Get those filthy hands off me or I’ll have them chopped from your wrists! I am no sack of calimbots to be thrust about by you this way.”
Farquanor rushed to the door, peered out, gaped in amazement.
“Dantirya Sambail? What are you doing here?”
“Ah, the High Counsellor. Ah. Please instruct your men in the proper courtesy due a high lord of the realm, if you will.”
It was beyond comprehension. The Procurator of Ni-moya, in magnificent traveling robes of lustrous green velvet over flaring yellow breeches, was grinning diabolically at him from out of the midst of a bewildered-looking group of Castle guardsmen, some of whom were holding drawn weapons. For all the splendor of his garb, the Procurator looked dusty-faced and creased as though from a long hard journey. Five or six men in the boldly colored livery worn by Dantirya Sambail’s people were nearby, as travel-worn as their master. They were being pressed against the wall by even more guardsmen. Farquanor recognized Mandralisca, the sharp-faced poison-taster, among them.
“What is this?” Farquanor demanded, turning to the highest-ranking guardsman in the group, a Hjort named Kyargitis, who had the perpetually glum face and bulging eyes of his kind. Kyargitis looked more than usually unhappy just now. His thick orange tongue was flicking nervously back and forth over the many rows of rubbery chewing-cartilage that filled his capacious mouth.
“The Procurator and these men of his obtained admission to the Castle through Dizimaule Gate—I will make full investigation, Count Farquanor, I promise you that—and succeeded in getting all the way to the vestibule of the Pinitor Court before they were challenged,” said the Hjort, puffing with chagrin. “He insisted on seeing you. There was a scuffle—it was necessary to restrain him physically—”
Farquanor, altogether baffled by this inexplicable materialization outside his door of the last man he might have expected to see in this hallway today—the audacity of Dantirya Sambail’s marching into the Castle with this little handful of men and expecting anything other than immediate arrest—gave the Procurator a sharp look. “Have you come here to assassinate me?”
“Why would I do that?” said Dantirya Sambail, all charm and friendliness now. “Do you think I covet your post?” The Procurator’s mysterious amethyst eyes fastened on Farquanor’s, giving him such a fierce blast of that strange outreaching tenderness of his that Farquanor had to struggle to keep from flinching before it. “No, Farquanor, my business is not with you, except indirectly. I’m here to speak with the Coronal on a matter of the highest importance. And so, since protocol requires that I apply myself to the Coronal’s High Counsellor—my congratulations, by the way, on your appointment: he took his time about it, eh?—I came up here to the Pinitor to see if I could find you, and—”
“Protocol?” Farquanor said, still bemused with amazement at the sight of this man here at a time like this. “There’s no protocol for granting audience to rebels against the crown! You are proscribed, Dantirya Sambail: are you not aware of that? The only appointment you have is in the Sangamor tunnels! How could you imagine anything else?”
’Tell Lord Korsibar I’m here and would see him,” rejoined the Procurator coolly, in a tone one might use in speaking with a footman.
“Lord Korsibar is busy at present with—”
’Tell him that I’m here and that I bring him his means of victory in the present insurrection,” Dantirya Sambail said, and he was even less cordial now than he had been a moment before. “Tell him those exact words. And I promise you, Farquanor, if you do me any interference in bringing about my conference with the Coronal, if you delay me by so much as another heartbeat and a half, I will see to it ultimately that you not only are removed from your present high office but are very slowly flayed of every inch of your skin, which will be wrapped in strips about your face until you smother from it. This is my very solemn promise, Count Farquanor, which I am most unlikely to fail to keep.”
Farquanor stared a moment, and then another, without replying. It seemed to him that behind the Procurator’s usual arrogance and bluster lay some extraordinary intensity of tension and unease. Nor was a threat of that nature from a man of Dantirya Sambail’s sort to be taken casually.
This strange visit was a matter, Count Farquanor began to realize, that went beyond his scope of office. It would be wisest not to interpose any pretensions of his own. In a formal frosty tone he said, “I will notify Lord Korsibar that you are in the Castle, and he will see you or not, as he chooses, Dantirya Sambail.”
* * *
“Why are you here?” Korsibar asked, as surprised as Farquanor had been just a short while before. “I never wanted to see you again, after you forced Prestimion from my grasp. And I hardly thought to have you come calling at a time like this. Should you not be fighting against me now beside your loathsome brothers in Salinakk?”
“I am not your enemy, my lord,” said Dantirya Sambail. “Nor are they.”
“You call me ‘my lord?’ ”
“I do.”
The meeting was taking place not in the throne-room or in the Coronal’s private office, but in Lord Kryphon’s Grand Hall, a long and dark and narrow room much less grand than its name suggested, where wall-charts of the campaign against Prestimion were hung and constantly updated.
Korsibar spent much of his time in this room these days. He sat slouched now in a low chair of some antique kind, with twining lizards of wrought iron for its arms. The only movements he made were those of his eyes, which shifted restlessly from side to side in their deep sockets; other than that he was utterly still. With one hand he gripped the yawning fanged head of the lizard that was the left-hand armrest, and with the other he held his head propped upright with a finger pressed against his cheekbone, hidden deep within his thick beard. Korsibar had let his beard grow in full lately, something he had never done before, though Aliseeva and other women of the court had told him that it made him look much older than his years; indeed, there were even a few bright strands of white glistening in its blackness. That was something new. But this was a taxing time beyond anything for which his comfortable early life had prepared him.
Sanibak-Thastimoon was with him, and Prince Serithorn and Count Iram and Venta of Haplior, and several of his other close advisers. Two Skandar guardsman hovered close beside Korsibar in case the Procurator had some mischief in mind. Dantirya Sambail stood squarely before the Coronal in that customary cocky spread-legged stance of his, arms pulled back behind him and head thrust forward. Count Farquanor, looking sour-faced and strangely sallow, stood just behind him.
Slowly, for he was very tired this day, Korsibar said, “I am your lord, so you say, and you are not my enemy, so you also say, and yet your armies hold the field against mine. Why is it that they don’t seem to know you’re not my enemy, Dantirya Sambail?”
The Procurator nodded toward the wall-charts. “Have my brothers’ soldiers done your troops much harm?”
“At the Jhelum battle they did. I have this
from Farholt.”
“And at the battle by Stymphinor, what there?”
“That battle was a short one. Navigorn had Prestimion beaten in the first half hour. We had few casualties there.”
“Send to Navigorn, my lord, and ask him whether the troops of Zimroel saw action against him at all at Stymphinor. Tell him that I claim it is the case that the armies under the command of my brothers Gaviad and Gaviundar never entered the fray that day, but held back, rather, until the issue was settled against Prestimion, and see what he says.”
Korsibar knotted his fingers in his beard and tugged at it somewhat after the fashion of Duke Svor, from whom, so he suspected, he had learned that mannerism. There was a terrible hammering behind his eyes. After a little while he replied, “If there were soldiers of yours at Stymphinor pledged to Prestimion, then why were they not fighting that day?”
“Because I told them not to,” said the Procurator. “I will not deny, my lord, that I allied myself with Prestimion in the first days of his rebellion. He is my kinsman: you know that. The ties of blood drew me to him. But I never had any great love for his cause.”
“And yet you gave him troops.”
“I gave him troops, yes, because I had pledged him I would do so, and at the Jhelum I let them fight against your army. But it was only a pretense, to swell him up with pride over an easy victory, and make him ready for the crushing. At the next battle my soldiers came too late to fight, and that was at my order too.”
“What’s this?” cried Korsibar. “Oh, you serpent!”
“But your serpent, my lord. Prestimion’s cause is hopeless. That was clear to me from the start, and it seems beyond dispute now. He is one man against a world; you have the backing of the people, and you will prevail. He may win a battle here and there, but his doom is certain.”
“You have that from your soothsayers?” Korsibar asked, with a quick glance at Sanibak-Thastimoon.
“I have it from here, my lord,” replied Dantirya Sambail, tapping his great gleaming freckled forehead. “Every ounce of wisdom I have in here, and there’s more than a little, tells me that Prestimion is attempting the impossible by trying to overturn your regime. And so I withdraw my pledge of aid to him: for I am not one who is given to toiling at impossible tasks. I’ve come here to you—at great personal inconvenience, my lord, which you can see from my rumpled look; traveling back and forth with such speed across the vastness of Alhanroel as I’ve been doing all this year and last, not to mention crossing the sea a couple of times, is no easy thing for a man of my years—for the sake of presenting you with the key to victory and putting an end to the strife that embroils the world.”
“The key to victory,” Korsibar repeated tonelessly. “What can you mean by that?” This conversation was becoming abhorrent to him. Dealing with Dantirya Sambail was like wrestling with manculains: there were deadly spines all over the man. He looked around the room for guidance, to Sanibak-Thastimoon, Iram, Serithorn, Farquanor. But their faces were as rigid as masks and their eyes told him nothing. “What would you have me do, Dantirya Sambail?”
“For one thing, you must take the field yourself.”
“Will you bite us both?” Korsibar demanded. “First you work treachery against your cousin, and then you try to lure me out of the Castle into the open, where anyone who cares to aim a javelin at me can—”
Dantirya Sambail grinned a tigerish grin. “Put your suspicions aside, my lord. You’ll come to no harm. Let me show you what I have in mind.—Is this the map of the battle zone? Yes: good. Here’s Prestimion, somewhere between Stymphinor and Klorn and moving to the northwest, I assume with the goal of reaching Alaisor and recruiting new troops for himself along the coast. Here’s the army of Mandrykarn and Farholt, somewhere around Purmande and heading toward him from below; and here’s Navigorn, to his east, pursuing him also. Perhaps Mandrykarn and Farholt will trap him in central Alhanroel, perhaps not: more likely not, but they’ll force him northward. Do you agree?”
“Go on,” said Korsibar.
“As he runs from place to place, trying to elude the two armies coming after him from this side and from this, word now reaches him that you yourself, the Coronal Lord Korsibar, have assembled yet a third army and have gone into the field yourself at the head of it. Look, here is the River Iyann, my lord. Here is the great Mavestoi Dam, and here is the reservoir behind it, Lake Mavestoi. Now, my lord, you take up your position in the hills above the dam; and then you let the word leak out to Prestimion’s spies that you are camped there, planning to descend on him from the north and destroy him.” Dantirya Sambail’s violet eyes were glowing now with excitement: they seemed almost incandescent. “His position is desperate, but he sees one last hope for himself! If he can attack your camp and manage to kill or capture you, he has at one stroke ended the war. Ringed all about him are the hostile forces of Mandrykarn and Farholt and Navigorn, but with you removed from the scene they would have no choice but to yield the throne to him.”
“So you bait a trap for him with me,” said Korsibar. “And he comes marching up the Iyann to take the bait. Yes, but what if he succeeds in snatching it, Dantirya Sambail? What if he does overthrow me with his one desperate final stroke? I’m not within his reach so long as I remain at the Castle, but once I’m in the field he has a chance at me. Not that I fear him, or anyone; but it’s only prudent for me to stay beyond range of some sudden wild thrust until this affair is done with.”
“Ah, no, my lord, no need to fret over that. Prestimion will fall into the trap and be destroyed, and no risk to yourself at any time. Here, my lord—let me show you—”
9
For Prestimion it was a time of steady retreat, and of the healing of wounds.
The losses at Stymphinor had not been as great as he first had feared, but they were serious enough. Of his officers he had lost Abantes of Pytho and the fearless Matsenor son of Mattathis, and also Thuya of Gabell, the Ghayrog Vexinud Kreszh, and an old playmate of his Muldemar childhood, Kimnan Tanain. A good many soldiers of the line had perished also; but the core of his army was still intact, though battered and to some degree demoralized.
And also Septach Melayn had taken a deep cut in the upper part of his sword-arm, which was an event that caused much wonder and dismay among Prestimion’s men. It was like the humbling of a god. No one had ever touched steel to Septach Melayn’s skin before, in all his years of mastery of the sport of swordsmanship. But the battle at Stymphinor had not been any sort of sporting event; and now Septach Melayn sat shirtless and pale and grimacing while one of the surgeons closed the long red slash for him with glossy black thread.
Was that an omen of their ultimate defeat, the peerless Septach Melayn wounded? The men were muttering darkly and making conjure-signs to ward off the demons that they feared were closing in on them.
“I’ll go among them,” said Septach Melayn good-humoredly, “and show them I’m well, and tell them that I’m relieved to discover that I’m mortal after all. Will make me less cocksure next time I’m in a fray, I’ll say: for indeed over the years I’d come to think I could best any opponent in the world without half trying.”
“As surely you can,” said Prestimion, who had learned that morning that Septach Melayn had taken his wound while fighting four men at once, and, despite the hindrance to his arm, had slain all four of them before leaving the field with the greatest reluctance in order to seek a poultice for the cut.
The behavior of the Zimroel armies, which had been so slow to take the field at Stymphinor, was another concern for Prestimion. He summoned Gaviad and Gaviundar to berate them for their laxness; but the fleshy-faced brothers were so penitent and abject that he withheld most of the anger he had had in readiness for them. Stocky thick-bodied Gaviad of the pendulous lips and jutting mustache was cold sober, for a novelty, and said over and over that his troops had been ready but he had been waiting for news of the cavalry charge before sending them forward, since that had been the plan; and tall b
ig-eared strutting Gaviundar of the bald head and great tangled orange beard actually wept in dismay for having failed to bring in his men in timely fashion. So Prestimion forgave them. But he kept in mind whose brothers they were, and, fearing always the trickiness that ran in the Procurator’s blood, warned them that he would tolerate no excuses at the next engagement with the royalists.
Which he prayed would not occur soon. His men needed time to rest and repair themselves; and he hoped also for additional troops to join his cause. Encouraging messages had reached him from Alaisor on the western coast, which was the port through which the family of Muldemar shipped its wine to Zimroel, and where he had many close connections both of business and of family: the leading folk of Alaisor, he was told, favored the rebel cause over Korsibar’s, and were raising an army to fight for him. Good news came from elsewhere in western Alhanroel too: all up and down the coast, in Steenorp and Kikil, in Klai, in Kimoise, in other cities too, people were debating the merits of the two claimants to the throne and more and more of them were giving the nod to Prestimion, for they had had time now to consider the means by which Korsibar had come to be Coronal, and that did not sit well with them.
All this was fine indeed; but those cities of the western provinces were very far away, and the armies of Mandrykarn and Farholt and Navigorn were close behind. What Prestimion needed now to do was head swiftly to the north and west, to the land of his supporters along the coast, and make rendezvous with them before the enemies to his rear could fall upon him and bring an end to his whole rebellion. With all possible haste, then, he took himself upward and outward across the continent, moving farther away from Castle Mount, and the throne he desired, with every passing day.
* * *
They were approaching the valley of the River Iyann, which flowed out of the north country and made a westward turn here that took it to the sea at Alaisor, when Duke Svor came to Prestimion and said, “I have found certain persons who can do some useful scouting on our behalf, I think. They claim to have learned certain information already that may be valuable for us to know about.”
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