on the subject outlined the ramifications: s’Ilessid blood made Lysaer the last legitimate royal heir and no city in Tysan cared to risk a return to crown rule.
Heated now beyond restraint, Diegan burst out, ‘You know you’ll be arrested and condemned as a dissenter? In Isaer, likely as not, they’ll throw you to the headhunters’ mastiffs. Sithaer’s Furies, man, just for some mouldy historical right to lay claim to clan fealty, you’re the living embodiment of these peoples’ fear of insurrection. I don’t care to see two hundred Etarran soldiers give up their lives to keep you from being savaged by a dog pack!’
‘Well then,’ Lysaer said equably. ‘The Etarran division will be sent home before any political misperception can arise to start any bloodshed.’ In maddening, single-minded majesty, he looked straight ahead as he added, Diegan, this issue is greater than me, more important than Tysan’s disorders. Somewhere in hilling, the Master of Shadow weaves plots. Sitting secure in Etarra flushing out barbarian encampments is never going to make him show his hand.’
To which Lord Diegan could do nothing but clench his jaw, wheel his courser out of line, and pound off at a canter to review the order of his troops. Speechless in frustration, he wished he had a lance in his hand and a living target to skewer. For it was never Lysaer’s dedication to the cause of killing Arithon s’Ffalenn that had been under contention; only the folly of allowing the Lady Talith to believe herself secure amid the troop who rode out to renew s’Ilessid claim to Avenor’s charter.
Prince Lysaer’s cavalcade travelled westward at a pace its seasoned war captains concurred was better suited to the staging of an invalid’s retinue. Those mercenaries with prior experience of moving troops complained mightily to their superiors, then arranged rough drills in the open camps to keep their cohorts smart. Unused to being fresh and idle, their men at arms diced and got fractious with each pause. Settlements and towns along the Mathorn road were favourably disposed toward Lysaer’s retainers, since the barbarian raids out of Halwythwood that distressed their trade had eased through Etarra’s campaigns. Lord Diegan grew accustomed to state dinners followed by exhaustive mornings of fielding grievances.
For the royal cavalcade grew longer, more massive, more weighed down with gifts with every city it passed. If the Prince of the West journeyed into his ancestral kingdom to win allies against the Master of Shadow, each mayor and guild left inside Rathain’s borders set themselves to ingratiate. However they might disparage royalty, they needed Lysaer’s goodwill lest the dreaded sorcerer think to turn on them with impunity once the prince who had defended Etarra was gone. The aftermath became familiar unto habit. Diegan sat in some draughty tent with a lap-desk, grim-faced as he battled the breezes that snatched at his lading lists and tiresome tallies of wagons. From Narms, they had five loads of carpets and woven silk, sumptuously coloured; from Morvain, downcoast, wool bales profitably traded for crystal from the famed glassworks at Falgaire. They had lanterns in wrought brass, barrels of rare wines and brandies, and from some beneficent farmer, foundation stock for a pig herd.
Lord Diegan came to wince at the creatures’ squeals, much as he did when the camp followers shrieked obscenities at cheating customers. Whatever Lysaer believed, a war camp was no place for anybody’s pedigree sister.
Since the baggage train made transport by water impractical, the prince’s retinue crept by road around the shoreline of Instrell Bay. Caught by a late-breaking ice storm, they crawled over the low pass at East Bransing, which parted the weathered summits of the Storlains from the furze-cloaked hills that northward gave rise to the loftier spur of the Thaldeins.
Despite Lord Diegan’s forebodings and a hostile letter of warning delivered by mounted courier from Erdane’s reigning mayor, the cavalcade crossed with the thaws into the realm of Tysan, past seat of the s’Ilessid high kings.
Camped in pastures, quartered in hay byres, they bought wood, milk and early greens from red-cheeked country matrons. To Diegan’s everlasting uneasiness, the company blatantly proclaimed itself to the eyes of every passing shepherd. The bellying, bullion-fringed standard with its brilliant blue cloth bore a sigil not seen for five centuries: the royal twelve-pointed star of pale gold. The curious came out to stare in droves. Whatever the sentiments held by city governments and their mettlesome packs of trade guilds, the crofters of Tysan lent tacit trust once assured the prince’s captains would pay for provender. Young boys watched the marching men in their helms, shining mail, and the bright, sharp steel of their longswords, and dreamed; or else turned up in holed boots and motley tunics, reeking of cow dung from the tilling and begging to be taken on for training.
Lysaer s’Ilessid turned none of them away.
‘Why leave them on the farms where their families must struggle to feed them?’ Oblivious to the squalor, he sat by the hearthside cracking nuts for Lady Talith in a peasant’s croft near Dyshent. Crickets chirruped in the smoke-grimed shadows of the corners and round-eyed children peered through the boards of the cattle stalls, where the matron had locked them for safety. Outside, amid a glitter of campfires, the fighting force sprawled at their ease in the mild night, while the off-duty watch laughed and cast bets, and the day’s new recruits dug pits for latrines behind the thorn fence of a sheepfold. Attentive to the timbre of the officer’s calls that wafted through opened shutters, Lysaer added, ‘These boys’ skills will be sorely needed later. Any unsuited for our fighting force will be given land of their own to husband, once Avenor’s rebuilt.’
‘If we ever get there,’ Lord Diegan grumbled acidly. Dark where his sister was leonine, he dug his knuckles into eyes gritted raw from the dust thrown up by his prince’s ridiculous train of wagons, columns of light horse and pack-mules. The rains ended earlier since the banishment of Desh-thiere’s mists; if the past plagues of bloodsucking insects were lessened, the air hung as close as new summer. ‘We’ll need to cut tents out of carpets, at this pace. Next winter’s frost will catch us before we can raise a roof to keep the rust from our weapons stores.’
‘Spend the cold season in Erdane with Talith, then,’ Lysaer said, and grinned in suave provocation. He wore neither doublet nor shirt. Since his offer to sling yoke buckets in from the dairy, the matron had carped until he stripped off his fine silk. Afterward, nobody remarked that his lack of finesse in the farmyard had left him bespattered with milk. Unjustly magnificent in fitted breeches of blue suede embroidered with seedpearls, he leaned down and scooped another nut from the poke by his ankles.
Across the cottage, the farmwife’s daughter thumped her chum, her gaze never leaving the beautiful prince, except to stab in envy at the tawny-haired lady who curled like a cat at his knee.
‘Or else go back to your Lord Governor in Etarra,’ Lysaer resumed, well aware of his captain’s coiled tension as he flipped up and fielded a nut-meat. ‘The Etarran division will return as I promised, once we reach the crossroad to Camris.’
‘You can’t be serious about that!’ Lord Diegan’s sharp movement rucked the braided hearth-rug and upset the little sack, and nuts cascaded into the embers. ‘You’re carrying the endowment to found a city, and -’
‘And what?’ Lysaer stretched and pecked a kiss on Talith’s cheek, letting her retire before the debate could encompass the Master of Shadow. Left to the censure of her brother, the prince stayed unmoved. ‘This is Tysan. My ancestors ruled here.’
‘For which Erdane’s mayor sent an edict to draw and quarter you!’ Hot in his velvets, Lord Diegan endured discomfort rather than let the dairy girl make unflattering comparisons. ‘The fanatics on his council will have troops out to slaughter your bodyguard before you’ll gain passage through his town.’
Lysaer looked back in reproach. ‘These are my people, Diegan. However I have to win my way past Erdane, whether my troops come to shelter under carpets or wind-breaks cut from our best murray silk, I won’t cross this land in such haste that I cannot understand the land’s needs.’
‘Sithaer take your royal principles, I’d do better arguing with a half-wit!’ Lord Diegan stood, the jingle of his spurs cut by the crunch of scattered nuts as he stalked past the fire and escaped to nurse his pique outside.
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