by David Keck
Up the track, Ailric had dropped from his saddle to peer into the road’s steep bank. There were trees near the road. “Here,” said Durand, “what’s this?”
“Where the oaks stand close by the track, someone has climbed the bank and gone up into the trees. Someone was watching, I think.”
Durand narrowed one eye. “There will have been men emptying bladders and bowels since Acconel, Ailric.”
“They climbed the bank on horseback. I cannot tell their number. The ground they’ve chosen is full of roots and stones. And the duke’s horses obliterated their marks when they rode through.”
Durand eyed the hills above the river where they stood, thinking that a shrewd captain would have no trouble hiding a conroi in the dells and basins there, leaving a few picked men by the road to count heads.
“Ailric, if that is where they went up, let’s see if you can tell me where they came down again.”
The young man nodded. He spotted something fifty paces down the road, where the small stand of roadside oaks gave out. Durand kept his eyes on the trees as they rode to the place.
“They rode down here. Not worried about covering tracks now.” Gashes shredded the sopping gray turf. “It’s hard to be sure how many, but they followed His Grace, that’s clear. The signs are very fresh.”
“So they slipped out of the road before Abravanal came, and the duke’s men trampled all signs of them in the road. But when the duke had passed, they dropped back into the track,” Durand concluded.
“It’s respect. They heard Duke Abravanal and the king’s herald and the whole retinue overtaking them. They took themselves out of the road. They were making way,” offered Ailric. “Standing aside while the duke overtook them.”
“You tell a fine tale, and I might take comfort in it, if we hadn’t all seen the wagons and carts and oxen in the duke’s train. Abravanal and his company could not overtake a plow team. No one nimble enough to mount that bank would need to step aside. They waited. They heard him coming. And they follow him now.”
As Durand peered down over Brand’s shoulder, he saw slash after slash in the bank, scattered up and down the road. “Ailric,” said Durand, “how many do you see?”
“More than one. Twenty? The road is unreadable.”
“You’ll count better in the woods, Ailric, please,” said Deorwen. Her mare had quietly caught them up. And Ailric answered with a curt nod, mounting the bank himself and disappearing among the trees.
Deorwen stroked her mare’s neck. “Who would follow the duke’s party?”
“Anyone,” said Durand.
She was becoming frustrated. “Men of Yrlac?”
Durand nodded once.
“Durand, is the duke’s party in danger?”
“Abravanal has the better part of two of armed squadrons at his back,” Durand said. “It would take a very strong party to trouble them.” But he did not know how many blades Leovere could call upon. Durand might have said more if Ailric had not reappeared.
When Ailric trotted back, he said, “Ladyship, I can’t know for certain, but there must be more than twenty. Big men, mostly. Good boots when they climb down. They might be wearing mail.” Deep marks, then.
“Not enough to give battle to the duke’s squadrons,” said Deorwen.
“No, Ladyship. Not enough for that.” Ailric had taken the rouncy’s bridle, but now he glanced to the ground.
“Ailric, what is it? If I’m being a fool, you’d best say so.”
Durand was looking up the valley. Milky-pale water stood in the ruts and hoofprints. A conroi of armed men rode just ahead of them. It could be very bad.
“If they are shadowing His Grace, we will have to go through them to reach Abravanal,” supplied Durand. “And twenty Yrlaci horsemen would be more than a match for the boy and I.”
“And where do we think Almora is in all this?” Deorwen asked.
“It would be far better if Her Ladyship had already overtaken the duke,” said Durand.
“It would be better if she’d never left Acconel.” Deorwen’s tone was muted. “But it is done. There is nothing for it. We cannot turn back. We’ll have to go on and see what comes.”
“They may not mean the duke any harm,” offered Ailric.
If Leovere’s men got hold of Almora, a great deal might change in Gireth and Yrlac.
* * *
THEY RODE CAREFULLY.
Ailric played outrider; Durand kept his eyes moving, thinking only that some useful advantage must come to hand at the last moment. He considered ordering Deorwen back to Acconel with Ailric, but knew she would take no order from him. Or anyone else.
The country broke into choppy hills, and the Banderol writhed restlessly between them while Ailric roved ahead as they watched for signs.
At one bit of high ground, crows reeled into the air just over the rise. At another, Deorwen heard a horse cry out. But, for an hour, they met no one.
Then, on a fencepost near the road, Durand spotted the Rooks once more. The two birds tussled, flapping for space. “What we really want to know is the end of the story. We were called.”
The uncanny sound made Durand flinch despite himself.
“There were whispers.”
“Dreams, brother.”
“And then Radomor and power and sanctuaries aflame, with King Ragnal going mad in Eldinor.”
“Fine days, brother.”
“But who was our Whisperer? Who summoned us to this northern land? Who wished us here, making trouble? Was it coincidence that the high sanctuaries burned or fell in? And the Wards of the Ancient Patriarchs grew thinner and thinner so we could play our little games?”
“Fine days, indeed.”
Durand passed near the fencepost and saw the birds struggling with flies. Nipping them from each other’s quills. Flapping at a cloud of the things. He feared that Deorwen must notice. It was no natural sight.
“But someone called us, Durand Col. Someone sent their whispers through the long nights to find us. And we wonder now, who they were. Could we leave in ignorance? And where are they now?”
“And we think you may be the key, Durand Col.”
Durand remembered the days when he’d first met the Rooks, and the murders and battles that followed. They had all served Radomor, at least for a time. He remembered Ferangore’s high sanctuary heaped with skulls like toadstools, as black birds carried souls from the roasting streets of the city under siege.
“We think this may be the time, and that you may be the key.”
Just ahead, Ailric had halted upon a wooded rise. And Durand left the Rooks to their mad muttering. They had come upon a village.
A jumble of low, mossy farmsteads slumped in a basin below the hill. The scar of the trampled roadway lay like the mark of a lash across the back of the place. “Millstrand,” said Ailric. “Part of Swanskin Down’s domains.”
They could see no one abroad in the place. Not even the smoke of a hearth fire.
“I think we take a moment to bang on a few doors. Find someone. Learn what they’ve seen.”
As they jounced into the village, still trying to get a sense of the place, all of the doors around them flew wide. Armed men swarmed over the village’s bermes and hedges, trapping Durand’s party in a thicket of blades. Durand had a glimpse of grim-faced men leveling crossbows, but the shock was more than Brand could stand. The animal reared and plunged, positively spinning while Durand got his flail loose. There was a snap and vicious hiss.
The bolt caught him in the collarbone before he knew it had been shot. And it would have been buried there in the sinews, veins, and bulging windpipe, except that he’d worn his mail coat. He felt the thing nick the point of his jaw as it glanced from the iron links.
“Wait! All of you. Have you no eyes in your bloody heads?” And Durand knew Coensar’s voice. “Another bolt, and you’ll have me to answer to!”
And Durand rounded on the crowd, seething. Anything might have happened. Deorwen was right behi
nd him.
Weapons were lowered—at first only a fraction, but already the call was traveling the line. “Durand Col! Lady Deorwen!”
Coensar strode out to meet them.
“We thought there was someone following.”
“There was. They should have been between us.”
“Durand.” Coensar took in Deorwen’s face. He saw Ailric. “Why have you come?”
* * *
DURAND WAS ON his knees in the wet turf.
“My daughter!” howled the duke. The girl was not there. She was lost—lost, they feared, beyond all hope.
The duke’s company sprawled across the road and into the reeds and fields all around. And everything stopped at the sound of his voice. Every drover and laundress was still.
Abravanal tottered on a camp stool with Coensar and the Herald of Errest on either side. Deorwen stood behind him. “In the turmoil as the column rode out, Your Grace, she slipped away,” Durand answered. “We prayed that she’d reached you.”
“You prayed that she had reached me? A girl alone? In this land of traitors? You prayed that she had reached me?”
Durand lowered his face.
“You were meant to guard her!” Abravanal said.
Durand bent as low as he could. “Yes, Your Grace.”
The man struck him and struck him again. “Where is Almora? That is the only answer I would have of you. Damn the king! Damn Ragnal, the devil! I should have been at her side!”
The old man thrust a finger at Deorwen. “You are foresworn! You are both foresworn. Oath-bound to watch over her! These long years have I placed my trust in you! My daughter. My only child. The last. Where is my life now? You are meant to have been her companion!”
Deorwen bowed low. There was no answer to give.
“It is treason, this. You have foresworn yourselves. Both of you…” He was muttering these things, but no one in Errest the Old would stay the old man’s hand if he went farther. Gunderic’s Sword, that great remedy of traitors, was somewhere in the man’s baggage even now. Or it could be the rope, if he wished. Even Durand could not gainsay him.
Durand took a breath to say “The fault is mine alone,” or something like it, when he felt an impossible tug at his sleeve; there was Ailric in the midst of all this. He had been standing a respectful pace behind. Now, Ailric gestured into the crowd where a young woman stood, head low: a laundress presumably, barefoot in a hairy blue cloak, standing among Abravanal’s lords with the Herald of Errest at her side. She wore a married woman’s sack-like wimple over her head and shoulders, but now she threw it off.
“Father!” she said.
Abravanal had fallen to his knees by then, looking up into the girl’s face. “Almora?”
Here was Almora: alive, cold, and pale.
A soft rain fell.
* * *
THEY TOOK SHELTER from the drizzle in the greatest of the bondmen’s meager cottages—a place that steamed like something plucked from a cauldron when the fires were lit within. There was an hour of affection, of relief and joy. Durand was there. Somehow the old man had half forgiven him. He’d been made to stand by the fire, steaming some of the damp from his clothes.
Abruptly, though, the duke seemed to realize where they were and a dread took hold of him.
Now, the old man looked into Durand’s face, ashen. “You must take her back,” he said.
Little gales of rain spun through the smoke holes at either end of the blackened roof. Coensar, Abravanal, and Deorwen surrounded the girl.
There was mud to Almora’s knees. It looked to Durand as though she’d fallen more than once, and, not for the first time, Durand cursed himself for letting the girl get away from him. Where was her horse?
The duke smiled. “She will be back in Acconel before noontide tomorrow.” And Durand wished that it were so. He could go to the Patriarch with his damned Lost souls. He could lock the girl in a good stout tower, and he could rest. The thought alone loosened the knots in Durand’s shoulders. Maybe Durand would sleep in the sanctuary. That would keep the dead from bothering him.
“Your Grace,” said Coensar, “it is not safe. I cannot say where they’ve got to, but there was a pack of Yrlaci raiders shadowing this column, moving pretty freely. They’ll have her as soon as she’s out of sight. There are a score or more back there.”
Coensar was right.
“We will send a squadron of knights with her. Two!” argued Abravanal.
“Your Grace,” said Coensar, “we’ve only got two squads. That lot behind us might well have fifty men. And fifty is more than we’d have left if you sent even one squadron back. We did not bring an army. We cannot divide our strength with the enemy on our heels.”
The duke was shaking his head, but Coensar was right and even the duke could see it.
Again, Ailric tugged at Durand’s sleeve. “Wrothsilver,” he said.
Durand winced; grimaced really. Wrothsilver was the last place he wanted to go: It was the chief town of the Barons of Swanskin Down. And the baron would likely have questions about his brother, Euric. Still, Durand’s discomfort didn’t count for much, even in his own reckoning. And the Acconel Road led them straight to Wrothsilver. He filled his lungs, stepping forward.
“We’ll take her to Wrothsilver,” said Durand. “We can get the girl shut behind iron gates and stone walls in an hour or two.” With the girl in Wrothsilver, Durand could ride for Acconel, or he might just stay with the girl, keeping her from slipping away again if the baron would allow Durand to sleep under his roof.
Ailric nodded. The town wasn’t far off.
“She’d be safer there than on the road,” said Coensar. “It would take more than a few raiders to break the walls of Wrothsilver.”
The old man set his faltering hand possessively upon his daughter’s shoulder. “She should be in Acconel.…”
Durand scowled, arms crossed over his chest. The old man was being peevish, and he likely knew it.
“There’s no better way, Your Grace,” said Coensar. “We can put her well beyond danger. It can be over and done by nightfall.”
The duke’s blue eyes bulged accusingly toward his daughter, but he only waved his hands. “So be it.”
* * *
IN A LITTLE more than two hours, the duke’s party had wallowed to a point where they could see Wrothsilver. The white town gleamed on a high green hill over the valley of the Banderol. Despite the wet afternoon, the place looked good. Durand judged that Almora would be safe there. He guessed that he could soon ride back for Acconel. He wondered whether he’d leave Deorwen behind to watch over the girl. It seemed wise.
Then, he heard the Rooks laugh. They erupted from the branches of a roadside thornbush, their racket causing horses to shy before they arrowed off through the drizzle.
Coensar was cursing at Durand’s side; he’d nearly been thrown.
He checked his horse sharply. “Damnable beast,” he muttered as the Rooks tumbled high under the clouds, banking toward the leaping spans of the White Bridge where it crossed the Banderol into Yrlac, west or southwest. Planters in the fields made the Eye of Heaven. Sheep took flight on the valley walls.
“Wrothsilver,” said Ailric. “Seat of the Barons of Swanskin Down.” This had been the shield-bearer’s home for ten winters or more, and they had been good winters for the town: Wrothsilver commanded the best crossing of the Banderol, and it flourished while Yrlac and Gireth remained under one rule.
“His Lordship sends riders.” The boy drew Durand’s eye to a road that led up to the town. And, sure enough, a double file of knights was already rumbling down through the drizzle, trappers flying. “That’s the Swanskin blue and gold,” said Ailric.
Coensar nodded. “Sure. But why so many? That’s fifty men. Vadir’s brought a little army. What’s in the man’s head, I wonder?”
Quietly, Coensar stiffened the vanguard, put a man or two on the shoulder of the road, and made sure that the duke and his daughter were locked up tight
. It paid to be careful.
Vadir’s men pulled up twenty paces short of Abravanal’s company. Not before Durand’s hand found the handle of his flail. Their straight-backed baron brought his charger stepping forward. He came in full battle gear and he looked nothing at all like bladder-faced Euric—and even less like the old baron. You might have mistaken old Swanskin for a village baker, with his paunch and white mustaches. Euric was a wineskin. But Baron Vadir was wolf-quick, with an impractical sweep of brown hair.
Old Swanskin was the man who’d ordered Durand to bite his tongue about Coensar’s treason for the general good. Now Durand had killed one of the old man’s sons. He did not leap forward to shake Vadir’s hand.
“Your Grace,” said the baron, “I have summoned every knight-at-arms who could reach the White Bridge in time, but the attack must already be underway. Your force left in a desperate hurry, stopping only to beg a change of mounts.”
“Force?” demanded Coensar. The rest were dumbstruck.
Vadir acknowledged Coensar. “I wish you’d told us what you intended instead of playing bloody games! And what’s this about my brother? What’s happened to him? They are saying he was injured.”
Durand wasn’t ten feet from the man. Like as not, he had Euric’s blood still under his nails.
“Your brother must wait,” said Coensar, and Durand thanked the Host of Heaven for that. “I need to know about these riders,” Coensar pressed.
Vadir blinked once, but looked at Coensar squarely. “Knights of Swanskin Down, mostly. Some men from lands along the Banderol, Sir Coensar. I knew half of them by sight. A pack of them charged in on blown horses right on the heels of the galloper who’d brought us word of Ragnal’s tournament rubbish. I sent every boy in Wrothsilver pelting into the country to call up my liegemen in time. We’ll fall in with your column. Leovere’s Penseval is no great distance beyond the White Bridge, but we should leave these carts of yours or we’re sure to be too late.”
Now, Abravanal was quavering. “What is he on about?”
Vadir spread his sword hand wide, as though calling upon the Host of Heaven. “Lord Leovere, Your Grace! You ordered that the traitor be rooted out. Your men were riding hard for Penseval before he could mount a defense. What has been going on in Acconel?”