Holden would never understand it. No matter how Christian tried to find a way to bring Holden to his side, there was no accepting abandoning the inviolate duties of a lord. Holden could have a hundred sons waiting their turn at the seat, but the task was Christian’s, and there was no changing his mind. Only in death could Christian relinquish this duty.
Activity at the forest line drew his attention. At his side, Christian tensed and reached for Sun’s reins.
“What is it, do you think?” Christian asked. “Those aren’t our men.”
“No,” Holden answered. He mounted his horse just as Marsh rode up.
“No vagabonds, either. Look at the armor. That’s proper issue.”
“But no standard. Intentional, no doubt.”
“Quinlanden men,” Marsh announced, riding up. “Our scout rode in to say they’d been spotted coming south through the Whitewood.”
“It’s not an attack,” Christian said, riding to Holden’s side. “There’s no more than a dozen of them.”
“They aren’t waving a white flag either,” Holden murmured. He spurred his horse to action and moved forward. The other men had come to life and followed, falling into rough formation.
“What else did the scout say, Marsh?”
“Only that it was just the ones coming across the field now. No more were spotted.”
“I don’t like this,” Christian said, whistling through his exhale.
“No, Son. I don’t like it either,” Holden said.
“Should we ride to meet them?”
“Send out a messenger, see what they want,” Marsh said. “My father always told me if it looks deceptive, you can bet it is.”
“No,” Holden said. He squinted across the field, and what he saw caused a hitch in his breath. He’d spotted their purpose, and he would ensure Christian never did. “I’ll go.”
“Father?” He felt Christian’s gaze from beside him.
“Alone, Christian.”
“Forget it,” Marsh said. “No way are you going out there alone. Sir.”
“Then you come, but Christian stays here.”
“Father. Two against twelve? Are you mad?”
“I am not mad, but I am your commander, and I command you to stay. Tyndall, with me.” He moved several paces forward to be sure Christian hadn’t followed. “You have command until I return.”
Holden pushed his mare to quicken pace, putting as much distance as he could between his son and what was ahead. Marsh kept astride of him, wearing a solemn look.
“Have you seen it?” Holden asked him.
“Seen what, sir?”
“Their reason for coming.”
“I assumed it was...” Marsh trailed off. “Oh. Oh no.”
“Christian cannot know until we have settled the matter.”
“Is she... do you think...”
“I know no more than you, Tyndall.”
Marsh exhaled. “We should have brought more men. It isn’t too late to go back.”
“They didn’t come here for battle. They came to parley. With me. Only me.”
Marsh launched into more questions, but they died unasked. He rode the rest of the way in silence.
“Say nothing,” Holden said, as they approached the Quinlanden men. “Do what you can to keep the sight of this from the camp.”
“Yes, sir.”
One of the guards stepped forward. “I’m Lieutenant Castle. These are my men.”
“Lord Dereham,” Holden answered evenly, trying, for now, to keep his eye off their prize. “But you knew that.”
“We did. It’s you we’ve come to see. But then, she was also on her way to you, was she not? To warn you?”
“Name your price.”
Castle laughed. He glanced back at his men, running his tongue over his lower lip. “I’d heard you were a man of few words. But not a single pleasantry? Do you not wish to even know how my day was?”
“Name. Your. Price.”
“You.”
“What?”
“You,” Castle said, the smile dying away. “Your life, for Lady Wynter’s.”
Marsh gasped. Holden held a hand up, staying him.
“How do I know she’s not already dead?”
Castle snapped gloved fingers. Behind him, a man nudged Aylen, whose broken body was draped over the saddle of a nearby horse. Her silver hair was matted with blood. She moaned, but hardly moved.
“Who did this to her?” Holden demanded.
“She’s fortunate to be alive at all after what she did to my men. Seven of them she cut down, before we righted things. Are you certain your son married a woman at all?”
The men laughed.
“Why hasn’t she healed herself?” Holden asked.
“She needs hands to heal, no?” Castle gestured behind him. “Triple bound. Just to be certain.” He winked.
Marsh’s horse made a soft sound nearby, reminding Holden he wasn’t alone.
“Very well. Place Lady Aylen on the horse with my man, Tyndall,” Holden commanded.
“No!” Marsh cried. “Lord Dereham, there has to be another way!”
“There is not,” he said. He sounded far more at peace than he felt inside, where a tempest of dread brewed. It hadn’t been born here, however. He’d possessed it in some form all his life, and now his life would end, and he’d never learned to conquer it. But not all things were given proper endings, as all Derehams knew. “Aylen was coming to warn us. There are more coming. What Lieutenant Castle here offers is not only the life of my daughter-in-law, but also an agreement to call off the attack in exchange for a prisoner of value. Am I understanding you correctly, Lieutenant?”
“Quite well, Lord Dereham.”
“No,” Marsh said again, but he’d already given up the fight. A man had to know when he was beaten. Marsh would learn this lesson early, hopefully before it cost him his own life.
“Place Lady Aylen on Tyndall’s saddle. Once they have ridden beyond the reach of your arrows, I will surrender myself in exchange for peace along the borderlands.”
Castle nodded. He waved at one of the soldiers to bring Aylen forth.
“You’ll turn over her sword as well. Witchwind is her ancestral steel. It belongs with her.”
One of the men groaned as he was forced to hand forward what had evidently been his piece of the war chest.
Holden turned to Marsh. He passed Witchwind to him, and then dropped his voice. “When she is closer to the camp than to us, unbind her and let her begin to heal herself.”
“Yes. Of course, sir.”
“For you I also have a message.”
Marsh tried to hide the tears brewing in his eyes. “Sir?”
“You tell my son that Iceborne is his. It has always been his, but now it is his as the Lord of the Northerlands. He will pass it to his own son one day, Guardians willing.”
Marsh nodded. He bit his lip so hard he drew blood.
“That is the price, Tyndall. You tell him. That is what I trade my life for here today. So that I can leave this world knowing my Reach is in the hands of my eldest son, where it belongs. Where it has always belonged.”
Voice cracking, Marsh placed his hand on his heart and said, “I will tell him, sir.”
“You’re a good lad, Tyndall. I thank you for your service and release you to the command of my son.” The soldier dropped Aylen in front of Marsh, who struggled to keep her from falling off. “That will be all, boy.”
Marsh wiped at his eyes. He saluted him for a few moments longer than he should have. “It has been my honor, sir.”
Holden finally exhaled properly when he heard Marsh’s horse fade into the distance.
“All I ask is that you do not take my head in front of my son,” Holden said to Castle when he could no longer hear echoes of Marsh.
“It will not be me who decides your fate, nor will it be decided here,” Castle said. “Bind him.”
Holden never let his eyes fall away as the bindings rippe
d at the flesh on his wrists. The fear swirling in his belly formed into something new then; it was no more useful, but it had evolved, and was that not all he had ever wanted, to grow? To become more?
Holden Dereham kept his head high and his eyes wide as he rode away with the enemy to the sound of his son’s screams.
51
The King
Samuel Law kept a respectable distance from the prince. He held back at the edge of the field, close enough to intervene if trouble struck, far enough to respect the man’s innate need for privacy.
This was how he’d always approached their short relationship. He had great respect for Darrick, and he supposed that feeling to be mutual. Within that respect was knowing when to give counsel, and when to hold one’s tongue.
Darrick stepped through the sea of Saleen corpses with a deliberate slowness. He seemed to be taking the time to regard each of their faces, committing them to memory. He knelt to run his hands over the fur of the familiars who had died with them, their fates tragically and intrinsically linked.
It was hard to know what their future king was thinking, but he could guess.
Law had never beheld such horrors. It was simpler to let his vision blur as he bore witness to the atrocity stretching for what seemed miles, never quite ending. All his life he had been the one others looked to for practical advisement. The cool center of a tempestuous sea. He was relieved no one was asking for it now.
Mortain’s death prevented more of this, but did not come near to making up for the losses scored to the Medvedev. There could be no reckoning to make this right. Only a careful recalculation of the battle ahead, and a removal of the power structure that had allowed this genocide to come to pass.
Easlan James appeared at his side. “I can’t help but wonder if we should have seen it. When that sorcerer left them idle so long, if we should have known.”
“Would you like comfort? I have none to give.” He pointed at Tyndall, kneeling, issuing emotional blessings over the dead. “The Grand Minister will spend weeks here, if he intends to bless them all. And it will do naught but for his own conscience.”
Easlan’s mouth twitched. “If we’d come sooner...”
“If we’d come sooner, the only thing different would be the timeline. Mortain needed Brandyn in order to send the Southerlands to attack.”
“Why not just send the Medvedev on the offensive?”
“I ken his magic was strong only enough to subdue them. You heard what Hamish said. They swarmed in like wraiths. The Medvedev didn’t fight. They didn’t even defend. Our men would not have attacked in these conditions without that order. They would’ve had the presence of mind to see it for what it was and put a halt to it.”
“Then it is our fault, no matter how we look at it.”
“Our fault was in not seeing the threat the sorcerers posed to our kingdom years earlier, before it came to this,” Law answered. He kept his eyes on Darrick. He didn’t dare drop them lower, joining Darrick in his grim assessment of the calamity. “And there are more yet out there, Steward James. Three that we know of. And I’d say what we know has not served us so well up until now.”
Easlan frowned. “You don’t speak like the other Southerlanders, Law.”
Law put it on for him. “Aye? Like salt and sand?”
Easlan chuckled. Law thought it felt good to hear a man laugh, even if he couldn’t manage the same from himself. If he ever laughed again, it would be a miracle from the Guardians themselves.
“I do when I’m in my cups,” Law said. “Or in the right company.”
“You? In your cups? I’d like to see that,” Easlan said. “What will you do now?”
“Whatever Lord Warwick decides, I will follow. I suppose a return to the Southerlands to regroup on our efforts. Beyond that...” Law nodded at the prince. “There is still this matter, isn’t there?”
“He cannot stay hidden forever.”
“I don’t believe he intends that at all.”
“He’s afraid,” Easlan said. “As we all would be, but we aren’t all kings, are we?”
“Neither is he,” Law reminded him. “Not yet.”
Easlan crossed his arms, once more looking out into the field of death. He whistled softly through his teeth, shaking his head.
“Are we all accounted for? All our men?” Law asked him.
“Aye.”
“No losses then?” Law closed his eyes. “Among our own, that is.”
“We were fortunate,” Easlan said. “But we would be fools to believe this is the end of it.”
“Aye,” Law answered. “The War of the Westerlands has been won. The War for the White Kingdom has only just begun.”
* * *
Darrick stopped trying to memorize their faces. He couldn’t summon more outrage by knowing more of them. There was nothing left to mine from the depths of his regret. As Assyria would have told him, if all you can think of is what you could have done, you will never do what should be done.
He hoped she’d survived her escape from Duncarrow. He would like the chance to tell her how her wisdom kept him alive in those early days at Camp Atonement. After a while he’d forgotten most things, but they were coming back now, when he could again make use of them.
Law and James thought he couldn’t hear them, but the silence from the dead was so deafening that their words were all he could hear.
These past months he’d trusted in the counsel of better, more seasoned men. He’d stepped aside and let the Westerlands lead a fight that belonged to them. But it was not the Westerlands who would have a reckoning for the massacre of the Saleen.
Only the Rhiagains would answer for this. For bringing the sorcerers to the White Kingdom. For everything since and between.
Wittingly or no, Eoghan had unleashed this.
Only Darrick could put it all back.
“Law,” Darrick called. “Could we make use of the ravens at Arboriana?”
“Of course. I can request a scribe as well. Would you be requiring a short or long distance raven, Your Grace?”
“Not one raven. I’ll need them all,” Darrick said. He closed his eyes as a cool breeze passed over the graveyard of the Saleen.
“I’m sorry, did you say all?”
“Every last one they have, and the ravens from any nearby towns as well,” Darrick replied. “I have a message that I want read in every corner of this kingdom, from sea to sea.”
Law stepped forward. “We’re ready to help you deliver it, Your Grace.”
James whispered to Law, under his breath. “Should we not wait for Lord Warwick?”
“No,” Darrick answered for Law. “I will not allow the kingdom to forget who brought us here, but it is I who must take us forward.”
James dropped his eyes and nodded.
Darrick turned. “The first one will go to Duncarrow, so that Eoghan will know and will have to witness the awakening ripples through the kingdom when they learn their rightful king has returned.”
“And with it, their hope,” James said.
“And Law,” Darrick said, forcing a small smile. “I would like my wife and son sent to me as soon as possible.”
52
A Perfect Circle
Jesse had first watched little Dain Rhiagain handed over to a man, who later in his visions he learned to know as Steward Rhiagain of Rushwood. The steward and his wife renamed him, though this new name had nothing to with his prior name or life. They were not told anything about the poor, unwanted little boy. He came to them without an identity, the childless couple becoming a new hope for his future.
So they called him Drystan, a family name of the Sylvaines. Drystan had dark hair and striking eyes that one did not quickly forget. They were a flecked gray, like the ash of a long-dead fire, and as he aged, and his baby cheeks gave way to the finer chiseling of a young man, they became his most prominent trait. Drystan’s first love was a girl named Gretchen, and she declared he would be known as Ash, and in return, he called
her Sparrow.
Gretchen was not just any daughter of the realm. She was the daughter of Lord Quinlanden, a man who trusted Drystan’s father as his own brother. Despite this trust, the lord did not approve of the evolving friendship of Drystan and his daughter. He had other plans for her, but if she knew it, if Drystan knew it, they did not seem bothered. Their love seemed bigger than anything—to them, at least.
Theirs was a courtship defined by swings. Jesse followed them through passionate, near violent disagreements, which eventually faded to a tenderness that made him uncomfortable to witness for how foreign it was to him. Drystan forgot his name and became Ash, and it was Ash who finally made the move that turned their playfulness into something more; something permanent, solid, and real that neither seemed capable of leaving behind. No matter how deep their fires of rage ran when one would fall in disfavor with the other, they never burned hotter than the flames that bound them.
Lord Quinlanden declared it would be an Oakenwell boy to secure Gretchen’s betrothal. Gretchen was heartsick, hiding in her room for days, but when she emerged, it was with a wickedness in her eyes. She went to Ash and used her pain as a weapon to cause him to hurt as much as she, striking out in her pain by insisting how thrilled she was, how utterly blessed to marry the Oakenwell heir. In one last terrible blow, she told Ash she had never loved him.
This was a game they played. Of jealousy and strife, of power and pain, and ultimately love. But Ash did not rise to this as he had in the past. It was not anger with which he received this news, but a heartbreak that could not be cured by apology. Not this time.
Ash left Gretchen by the large dogwood in the great Rushwood, and when he did not return later that day, or the next, Gretchen knew she had extended the game too far this time.
Her pride kept her from being the one to mend the cold war between them. It was her pride that ultimately caused her to arrive too late to his family’s keep, discovering from an attendant that the Sylvaines had gone to spend the season with the Medvedev. They were not expected for a month or more.
The Broken Realm Page 57