will form up tomorrow for Erdane to defend the High Temple against the rogue avatar.”
Another captain gasped. “They’re sheep herded to slaughter!”
“Maybe.” The Hatchet glared at his detracting officers. “Tell me, which bunch would you sacrifice?”
Only the next in command dared a protest. “Our strongest would hold that line and not break.”
“Yes, and die to a man for no purpose!” The Hatchet waved off his underlings’ outrage. “If the demoralized companies and green recruits run, weakness favours their chance of survival. Maybe the mad avatar will lack the stomach to murder a pack of puking tenderfeet.” His bark chased the stunned officers crammed at the exit. “Get on, directly! My orders won’t wait.”
Barged after them into the black pelt of rain, The Hatchet yelled for his messengers, some to ride straightaway to alert the towns and the Light’s stationed garrisons. Others would carry his notes of requisition and summary records to placate the priests.
Urgency cut no slack for the midsummer gale churning the coastal road into soup. The Hatchet returned, breathless and soaked, and lit into the scribe caught resharpening his nibs. “Sit up and take my dictation!” Given the extensive planning that Lysaer’s surprise move overturned, neither the Light’s lord commander nor his master of letters saw rest.
Cloudy dawn pierced the gloom when at last The Hatchet stood up. The campaign trestle before him was swept clean of the last revised dispatches. Smoke gritted the air, with the newest campaign plans burned to doused ash inside a commandeered chamber-pot. No evidence remained to disclose his rapid redeployment. Outside, the thinned encampment kept the boisterous semblance of an unchanged routine: troops engaged in practice bouts with enough blundering racket to maintain the appearance of numbers. A shrewd eye might discern the reduced strings of horses hitched to the messenger’s picket line; or notice that the cauldrons under the cook shack’s sagged awning served less than yesterday’s head count.
Short bones aching, The Hatchet knuckled his eyes, too restless to retire. Gadded by nature, he moved to inspect the night’s progress before his swift raid overtook the renegade vessel. Met by another obstruction, his bulled stride all but mowed down an inbound equerry.
“Messenger, sir! Bearing a High-Temple mandate, arrived under Hanshire’s banner.”
“Get the fellow in here double-quick.” The Hatchet lurched back and dropped into his chair like a sackload of bricks.
A voice murmured without, while another’s light tread squelched over the sodden ground. The figure that darkened his entry came alone: no man, but a slender, imperious female in a purple cloak banded with scarlet.
The Hatchet shoved erect as if pinked. “I’ve more pressing priorities.”
Yet evasion did not stem the woman’s impertinence. “If your urgency concerns the delinquent galley shipped out of Falgaire, my business might speed your endeavour.”
The Hatchet shrugged. “At what ruinous price?” But the witch had forestalled him. Caught at close quarters, he stared upward with blistered hostility. “I might rather know the Master of Shadow’s current activity. Ah, no! Not again,” he chided. “Don’t trouble me with a replacement for your last shady talisman. Or didn’t you mean to add spin to the failures that botched my invasion of Havish?”
“No. Our mutual aim was subverted as well. Seek due revenge upon Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn.” The Koriathain advanced with cool equanimity and placed a cedar box on the trestle. “Our token today is sent in good faith.”
Since The Hatchet failed to snatch up her gambit, the enchantress flipped the catch and raised the fitted lid. Nestled inside, a steel crossbolt quarrel scribed a bright line in cold daylight. The notched end for the cable had razor-edged fins instead of plumed fletching. When her gloved fingers eased the coffer closed, the metal’s suspect sheen imposed the after-image evoked by a latent enchantment.
The Hatchet grinned without delicacy. “You seek an assassin to slaughter a god? Find a more gullible fool. One who doesn’t mind dying in martyred flames, condemned for collusion with Shadow.”
“Soon enough, your High Priests will revise their priorities.” Shown caustic contempt, the Koriani witch returned a feline smile. “The veracity of the True Sect Canon can’t withstand the word of a living avatar. Lysaer s’Ilessid poses a liability to the purity of their creed. Unless, of course, his divine status becomes discredited. He is mortal, in fact. Fellowship sorcery grants his longevity. Wound him in public, and his divinity will be exposed as a sham.”
“I have other priorities,” The Hatchet repeated, annoyed enough to shoulder aside her insinuations.
“Do you truly?” she challenged, a post in his path. “Why not accept help? I might spare you the waste of resources, even by-pass a squalid day’s search for a commandeered ship.”
But her blandishment misfired. The Hatchet clenched his jaw as though he chewed marbles and ploughed on with insane disregard.
“Brute!” gasped the enchantress. Spurned by the rough shove that displaced her, she dropped civilized discourse for spellcraft.
For one breath-stopped instant the air seemed to burn. The Hatchet blinked, staggered backwards. By the time vision cleared and his balance recovered, the pavilion lay empty. No sign remained of the nosy enchantress beyond the latched box left behind on the trestle.
The uncanny artifact was far too dangerous to leave at large in the war camp.
The Hatchet spat a ferocious oath. Forced to secure the damnable construct under lock and key, he pursued his disrupted course of inspection in a viciously poisoned mood. Throughout, the anxiety haunted: had his late campaign in Havish been sabotaged, with a victory snatched from his grasp? Who knew what twisted wickedness motivated the Koriathain.
To be wrangled again by their wiles mocked his competence. Worse, fumed The Hatchet, the bedevilling shrew played on his fierce desire to see Lysaer s’Ilessid deposed after the shame of defeat. Hooked bait on that weakness galled his thorny temper.
“Damn your meddling Prime, I will seize my reckoning,” he snarled, then shouted outside and summoned his equerry at a frazzled sprint.
Repercussions touched off by the upset in Dyshent flared more than The Hatchet’s distemper. Across the continent, surrounded by packing crates as the Senior Circle of the Koriathain uprooted itself from their entrenched lair at Whitehold, the Matriarch vented annoyance. “The cagey snake has rejected my overture!”
“Your morning’s work was scarcely in vain,” soothed the attendant, hovering Senior. The spelled crossbolt had stayed in The Hatchet’s possession, a temptation planted in fertile ground. “The game is young. The Light’s prickly commander will surely succumb, if only to upstage the avatar.”
But Selidie’s displeasure rejected optimism. “The overblown martinet lacks respect for our order.” How dared he threaten a reigning Prime with his pipsqueak talk of retribution! She needed the man to react on his merits, not haltered in spells as a puppet.
Her bit players must all be engaged by free will. Anything less circumvented her cause to wrest the sisterhood clear of the Fellowship’s compact. But the very tools to pressure the Sorcerers carried a double-edged price: where The Hatchet’s directive to eradicate clanblood weakened the historic guardianship of the free wilds, such butchery also reduced the available pool of heritable talent. Fewer gifted candidates would survive to be inducted and replenish the order’s strength. Koriathain wrestled other perverse inconveniences: Selidie dared not risk a passage by galley to leash the Light’s mongrel commander herself. The might just restored by recovery of the Great Waystone made the amethyst too precious to hazard at sea.
Her choice to relocate to Daon Ramon imposed an inconvenient journey by land. Hence this invasion of boxes, up-ending her household just as fractious events approached a critical crux.
Lysaer’s double-blind play was exposed: The