adult who’s fit to bear weapons. Assign them in squads. They’ll clump the refugees into groups and funnel them single file through the tunnel connecting the natural grottoes under the stores vaults.”
Saroic tasked the field scouts to manage the exodus, then hand-picked the best twenty-five from the war band. “You’re to cave in the passage after the last group. Then, if you can, collapse the archway to the galleries before the enemy breaches our gates. Should they break through beforetime, delay their advance. If luck favours, and you fight your way free, harry the dedicate troops at the rear-guard with traps and diversions.”
A shadow raked over the distraught messenger. Weathered oak, with someone’s strayed infant crooked in one muscled arm, the war captain of the Thaldein outpost reached Saroic’s side. Kin resemblance was unmistakable, hewn into a middle-aged profile hardened by experience.
“You will leave through the tunnels and stay with the families,” Saroic commanded the uncle displaced from succession. “I charge you to keep them safe! If I don’t live to rejoin you, then serve the s’Gannley lineage and stand shadow for Tysan’s crown after me.”
“Not the Sorcerer’s will, or a shrewd use of resource.” Ice calm, the scarred campaigner handed the baby off to the anxious mother arrived at his heels.
“You will do what is best for the realm!” Saroic snapped, strained.
“Exactly.” Authority spoke. The uncle snapped callused fingers. Five veterans poised for his signal closed in. A moment’s demeaning, adamant scuffle saw Saroic s’Gannley hurled flat on his back in restraint.
“Truss him!” Tears moistened the stony cheeks of the man who betrayed his young nephew. “You’ll run with the families as Asandir wished. I stay to fight. No, by Ath’s witness! Don’t gainsay sound sense! You know me, Saroic! I’d give rein to fury. Turn back and fight, when wisdom demands swift retreat for survival. Let my band shoulder the final stand, and don’t sacrifice the better use of your canny leadership.”
Saroic spat a mouthful of grit. “But your wife and children—”
The winded scout turned his head, sick with sorrow. “Dead,” he gasped, brutal. “They were in the low country, remember? For your cousin Saieda’s coming of age.”
Saieda, who had loved roasted chestnuts and somehow acquired indigo ribbons for her oldest sister’s wedding. Tysan’s pinioned caithdein raged in bludgeoned grief. “Damn the murdering True Sect, and thrice curse the Fatemaster’s cruelty!” To his insurgent uncle, he shouted, “No! I won’t sanction suicide. Our people need you as never before!”
Yet the stricken husband and father stayed deaf. “Go on, you daisies! Gather the children. Get these people out! I’ll see the withdrawal through as rear-guard. For those who object, call my bootless conduct down later!”
Against Saroic’s furious protests, he thundered, “Try me for treason if I outlive the day! No contest, I will take up arms here and now. Yes! And cut down all comers who won’t back your dutiful place as Tysan’s caithdein!”
Lysaer s’Ilessid marched southward across Camris with the martial glitter of steel at his back. Requisitioned under his direct authority, the white-and-gold panoply of Sunwheel standards paraded before an elite mounted troop of Miralt Temple’s dedicates. They went armed for war beneath blazoned surcoats. The divine ultimatum thrust on their truculent priests had silenced indignant objections. Lysaer claimed his prerogative as their hallowed avatar: either the religion shouldered his bidding to redress The Hatchet’s mandated massacre, or the temple and its lofty sanctuaries would burn, levelled by the Light of his wrathful hand.
Dace followed in the stirred dust of the baggage-train. Assigned to mind the wagon with Lysaer’s effects and the loan of an upstaged officer’s canvas pavilion, he travelled astride a dappled grey gelding of mild temperament. If he no longer tumbled from the saddle when horses shied underneath him, his plodding mount did not stem his anxiety as the cavalcade crossed the bleak grasslands of Karmak. Drought had baked the soil to flour. The wind bore the scent of crisped sedge and an ominous taint of distant smoke.
Yet no carmine glare stained the horizon. Insects clicked, while the sunlit dazzle of mica glanced reflections off the bleached rocks. Rushed by the ripple of displaced senses and another ephemeral whiff of torched pine, Dace battled distress: the clanbred traits of his ancestry sensed slaughter, stamped into the flux. While no fallen bled on the earth in this place, and no wildfires burned, Lysaer’s challenge of True Sect authority came too late for the temple’s campaign. Eastward, the swords swung by Canon decree already reaped barbarian lives.
Nauseated, Dace let the sensible gelding keep pace. He dared not pull up. Too many hooded eyes watched. Not only the ranks of the dedicate faithful, but two vested priests and a True Sect diviner marched with the column from Miralt. Though he remained shielded by Davien’s conjury, an upsurge of Sight might be miscalled as madness or worse, an aspect of unsanctified talent.
The priests nursed their creeping suspicion that a corrupt influence acted on Lysaer. Night and day they sought for the signs of foul practice at large in his company.
After dark, crossing the scrub between camp fires, Dace heard the furtive whispers. He watched the uneasy glances exchanged. As he lugged his liege’s warmed wash-water from the cook-shack, he drew scrutiny along with his tarnished master. If the dedicate guard conspired in disloyalty, Dace feared above all the stealthy blade of an assassin by night. His liege would be betrayed by the faith: not if, but when, as the road to Erdane steadily shortened, and the messenger pigeons flew daily from the priests’ wicker cages, winging updated word across Camris.
Yet mornings came and went without incident. The company re-formed and tramped onwards through its ochre cloud of stirred dust. No underhanded attack disrupted their southbound march. White and glittering gold, the conscripted men snaked in columns across the taupe barrens. Dace was not reassured. When a horn blast from the vanguard brought the baggage-train to an unscheduled halt, he jabbed his heels into the grey and reined out of line to identify the obstruction.
The willing horse leaped the dry gulch at the verge and cantered through the open broom. Dace disregarded an officer’s inquiry. Accusations shouted in his wake failed to turn him aside. Whipped frantic by need, he flanked the stopped squares of ranked men, climbed the hill-crest, and seized a clear vantage.
The bristling line of another war host occupied the country ahead, a daunting show of superior numbers to challenge Lysaer’s bid for passage. Foot ranks and horse, their formation meant business. Dace sized up the banners, dismayed.
The moment was lost to try a deterrent. Before the poised muscle nerved up for the charge, the Light’s proclaimed avatar spurred forward alone. A toy figure on a white horse, caparisons aflash with gold bullion, he left his escort, bare-headed and weaponless. The gesture outstripped human mortality. Godlike, Lysaer claimed his authority bald-faced. He would wrest the True Sect High Priesthood to heel through a blustering arrogance that caught the breath in the throat.
Dace knew the man behind the facade. Perhaps only he grasped the act’s drastic courage, or foresaw the hideous price if the bluff went awry. Stakes that in fact might see another trained host razed to ruin, with naught left beyond winnowed carbon.
If The Hatchet understood the ploy was no game, but a duel waged with blunt nerve at lethal risk, no party came forward to parley under a flag of truce. Without even a token attempt to negotiate, an officer’s bugle sent movement through the massed lines.
“No!” Dace exclaimed.
But like the cresting foam of a breaker, archers stepped to the fore. There, they poised with strung bows and nocked arrows, readied for the order to loose.
Dace shivered. Warning jabbed him to clap desperate heels into his horse and careen down-slope at a foolhardy gallop. Distance was the enemy: a windswept expanse of bleached grass spread between the unstoppable, unfolding tableau. Oblivious to the servant’s belaboured approach, the lone horseman in dazzling splendour opposed the pale flash of drawn yew. Naked