the rock set to stout shoulders. Without reference to the late meeting gone bad, he said only, ‘You’ve chosen to stay the brute course.’
Vhandon shrugged. ‘Old habits die hard.’ He had served as Bransian’s field-captain for twenty years, before debt of honour had seen him transferred into Arithon’s service.
Yet Talvish saw past the stark front of the stoic. His quiet held drilling intensity.
‘The duke asked!’ Vhandon stated, his raw burst all but drowned by the racket of armourers’ hammers. ‘Should I have refused?’
‘Not my call to make, friend.’ Talvish side-stepped the lamp-man just arrived to snuff the wick by the entry. Before the flame died, he measured the grief masked behind the rapacious decision. ‘I know there’s been word from a Fellowship Sorcerer. What went down when the grey cult fell at Etarra? If Arithon had perished on the dark moon, you’d be off to get drunk. Not leaving the keep with a captaincy.’
Vhandon unburdened. ‘The duke’s raised his stakes. Called us to lay waste to more crop-land. Southward to Six Towers. Westward as well, clear over to Pellain.’
Talvish sucked a sharp breath. ‘Better say what ill news has blown in from the north. Was it Luhaine? Seems he always bears the rough tidings.’
The equerry dashed up with Vhandon’s fresh horse. The reinstated veteran accepted the reins, checked the girth, then ran down his stirrups. ‘Kharadmon delivered the worst to Dame Dawr, since the s’Brydion men weren’t minded to listen. The gist?’ He shrugged, helpless. ‘You have no idea.’
‘With Prince Arithon involved? Say again!’ Talvish collared the servant, sent him back for a second mount. ‘Shall I guess? There’s not a Kralovir cultist left standing, but half the north’s mayors pissed their sheets out of shock. Dead bodies consumed by white mage-fire aren’t subtle. When Rathain’s town-born are done being scared, they’ll draw steel for revenge. Cheek by jowl with everyone else in East Halla, they’ll be ramming our gate, mad as hornets.’
Vhandon laughed, bitter. ‘Fate wept! Did you eavesdrop?’
Yet Talvish could not be hazed off. The shrill clang of steel and coal fumes from the forges did not cause his closest friend’s headache, tonight.
‘Aye, you’re right,’ Vhandon cracked at due length. ‘The grey cult’s destroyed. But Arithon’s tactic unleashed Desh-thiere’s curse. We’re not going to face necromancy, but elemental light. The Fellowship’s sent warning that Lysaer’s come undone, verging on geas-bent madness. He’s swayed Tirans from fixed independence, that fast.’
The worst followed, quickly: that Kharadmon had pressed on to awaken the matrix of the old centaur markers and seal the free wilds of Atwood. Some forest clan families could withdraw to the Tiriacs. The rest would shelter at the ruin of ancient Tirans, where Traithe stood in residence to advise Melhalla’s caithdein.
‘The duke refused sanctuary,’ Vhandon summed up. ‘Nor would the wives relocate their families, or send out the young heirs to protect the core strength of the blood-line.’
‘The siege would be lost on morale, if they tried,’ Talvish allowed, brushed by dread. Nor could Bransian change his chosen course, now. Lysaer’s muster had progressed too far.
The seasoned campaigner, looking ahead, must take icy stock of the walls and the gates, the trebuchets, and the causeway and winches. Against force of arms, the citadel was secure, if not very near to impregnable. But faced by the mage-gifted mastery of light, wielded by a curse-driven fanatic, no mortal might answer except for the one the fearful named Spinner of Darkness.
‘I am not made as his Grace of Rathain, to forsake my loyalties over a principle.’ Vhandon jammed his foot into the stirrup, laid raw. ‘This is my country, and my parents’ and grandparents’ before them. If Alestron goes down, where else would I go? I can’t stand to watch from the side-lines. Our day for defeat is not written, besides.’ Astride, he deliberately gathered his reins. ‘The Mathiell Gate’s stonework was laid to stop drake fire. Before we’re starved out, the moment may come when a cool voice for reason might spare a disaster.’
Talvish raised his eyebrows. ‘Keep on wasting your breath to explain. I was hanging around to hear orders.’
Vhandon stopped in midtirade. ‘You want to serve with me?’
The blond swordsman grinned. ‘Damned well not under anyone else! Tell that laggard to hurry along with my horse. Then we’ll argue in earnest, or maybe toss straws.’
‘Over which of us trims that jackanapes goatherd into something resembling a soldier?’ Vhandon shook his head, as close as he came to flummoxed exasperation over the temperamental young grass-lander left in their charge. The Araethurian had won their affection, a frank complication since a bad turn by Koriathain had shapechanged him into Arithon’s double.
‘Daelion’s bollocks!’ the elder campaigner ran on. ‘Keep Fionn Areth here, and Mearn or Sevrand will crash heads to unwind his insolent tripes. That’s if Parrien can’t ram a pike through him, first. We daren’t turn the yapping fool loose with that face! Not with the country-side swarming with spies and encampments of Sunwheel skirmishers.’
‘Well, we could,’ Talvish argued. He accepted the mare trotted out by the groom and vaulted astride. ‘Though you’re right. With nobody watching, the yokel might march off to Kalesh. Find himself slaughtered as Shadow’s own self, as he hops into line to enlist.’
The next morning’s dawn, Talvish took charge of the sweep down the trade-road to Pellain. Under his handling were eighty crack horsemen with standing orders to raze the fields through the back country. When the reiving was done, they were to fall back to the Tiriac foothills, in position to send warning should the town salve its wounds by trying an east-bound invasion. Since Fionn Areth was too much underfoot, and offensive with inflamed opinions, Vhandon attached the young man to the foray with hopes he might learn through no-nonsense experience.
The tight-knit troop of veterans rode out. All speed and grim purpose, they skirted the southern fringes of Atwood, doused by the squalls that raked off the Tiriacs. Scorching heat did not faze them, or fireless nights. They slept on rough ground and ate hard-tack and cheese, and met a greenhorn’s complaints with clipped laughter. Fionn Areth’s brash ideals and drawled, grasslands vowels were made the butt of crude jokes.
Jaw set, the young man shouldered detail with the shovel, night after blistering night. His riding improved, and his sword-play became less classically neat and more dangerous. While his face tanned in squint lines, the hazy horizon revealed only flocking blackbirds and galloping post-couriers. The empty road was the precursor to war. The caravans spurned the land route through East Halla, the merchants staying well clear to avoid the outbreak of hostilities.
Talvish bolstered his scouts. Into the rolling hills south of Pellain, his picked company took to the brush. Half mounted, half on foot, they fanned out, all business as they slipped like grey wolves past the verges of Atwood. Kharadmon’s warning forbade them to enter the forest. The old centaur markers were realigned for protection, and to broach their tuned ward without Fellowship leave might well cost a strayed man his life.
‘Damned well makes things dicey,’ the watch scouts complained. ‘Flush an enemy, we could easily become cut off, or get ourselves hazed against the defences and shot down like cornered rabbits.’
Yet day followed day, with no movement sighted. Each evening, Fionn Areth dug the latrines, cursing his blisters in the ripe dialect once used to malign stubborn goats.
‘You haven’t figured, boy?’ cracked the scarred veteran wringing his shirt by the river. ‘A soldier’s life is all grinding routine. Who sold you the rosy notion of honour, trumped up in bright flags and glory? We’re here to burn barley. Tossing a torch takes a damned sight less practice than trenching hard ground with a spade.’
‘Don’t listen,’ admonished the rear-guard lieutenant sent to string up