by Janny Wurts
Jieret wondered whether his deceased war captain had known the same bitter despair, trussed and wounded as he had been near the end, a cipher retained among enemy hands while still bound, unwilling, to the wrong side of Fate’s Wheel.
Pragmatic to the last, Caolle had not stood down. The clan chief his able teaching had raised was honor bound to do nothing less. Against grinding humiliation, and the inconsolable grief that yearned for release into the rapturous refuge of mage-sight, Jieret fought. He rejected the suffocating void of futility and forced his tormented mind to wring meaning from every detail of his surroundings.
Activity from the Alliance encampment filtered through the tent wall. An invalid could track the banter and complaints of men on campaign and keep count of mentioned numbers. He could listen for inbound and outbound patrols, and between the dinning clang of a blacksmith’s hammer, discern the individual neighs of picketed horses. Jieret strained through the chatter of the water boys thawing ice in the cauldrons, then the querulous bark of an officer demanding if Skannt’s prized pack had been fed. No hounds bayed or barked; these dogs would be trackers cut to run silent, a deadly danger should they be yoked into couples and set on the trail of a fugitive.
In time, a disturbance unraveled the established pattern of routine. A scout just arrived on a lathered horse brought word of a raiding clansman. The reiver was assigned the fresh blame for five dead, and two victims, grievously wounded.
‘… the same devil who slipped through the checkpoint, disguised. Yes, he got through! Who wouldn’t have passed him? He used the pretense of bearing our own wounded officer on to the care of a healer.’
Last night’s watch captain answered the predictable inquiry with a professional’s clarity. ‘A patrol was dispatched several hours before dawn, under orders to trap that barbarian.’
The day’s duty officer returned his harried confirmation, that the killer had not yet been found. Between the ongoing demands of rotating scout teams and sentries, of settling disputes, and attending the loose ends of the half dozen bothersome skirmishes with clanborn holed up in thick brush, he and his overworked staff had been further beset by Sulfin Evend’s scouring tongue.
Lysaer’s Lord Commander had cut them no slack, but adjusted the trim of a discipline blunted by unremitting weeks of Daon Ramon’s rough country and the harsh winter’s recurrent foul weather. The recoil was ongoing. Men scurried, shamefaced, still caught aback by the colossal upset of receiving the Divine Prince’s presence in a war camp not groomed to host royalty.
The dissent outside the command tent eddied nearer, the barked voice of the officer clashing against implied reprimand. ‘Then wear my boots, curse you! Damn bastard sorcerer’s henchmen are demons, wicked as lightning to catch.’
Jieret lay like lumped wax on the pallet, unwilling to betray the least sign of sharp wits to the watchful eye of the guardsman.
‘Very well, horseman, let’s have your report. Short and sweet, is the wretch sent across Fate’s Wheel? Then how did your sergeant’s blundering negligence manage to let him escape?’ The approaching footsteps squelched through the muck beside the campaign tent, and on a blast of iced draft, burst inside.
Cut off by the slap of the canvas door flap, the breathless messenger delivered, ‘… only one barbarian, lordship, still on the loose. Wind itself couldn’t corner him. He’s got remounts in tow.’ His excitement flowed into detailed recitation as the arrivals stamped through the curtained partition to consult the tactical maps. ‘Damned fugitive’s already reached the trade road. Can’t read which direction he turned. Too many wagons have scoured the tracks. If we’re to find where he took to the hills, we’ll need a skilled tracker and handlers with a dog pack.’
‘I’ll give you twelve men, and six couples of hounds,’ the day’s watch officer snapped in decision. ‘Take the second-best tracker. I want the one Skannt trained kept in reserve, for the hour we flush out the Shadow Master.’
‘No. Send Skannt’s man, now,’ Sulfin Evend countermanded.
‘But, your lordship, that’s overreaction, surely?’ Present all the while, perhaps dozing after his superior’s blistering review of the camp, the Etarran captain arose to a slither of cloth and the creak of a pegged wooden camp furnishing.
Avenor’s Lord Commander slapped down his protest. ‘If the clan wretch has remounts, he’ll be moving for some purpose. The second-rate tracker might lose him.’
‘One man?’ scorned the watch officer, all gruff disbelief. ‘Sending Skannt’s tracker’s like using a catapult to peg down a damn fool rabbit.’
‘Get this much, and clearly!’ Sulfin Evend broke in. ‘By my command, no murdering clan bastard will be given any such quibbling advantage. He might snatch that margin. Your Blessed Prince doesn’t want his kind left free to breed up clutches of children! Bring him in living to answer my questions, or else drop him, dead. Fail in this, and somebody here loses his officer’s badge! Take my word, captain, you don’t want to put me in that kind of thrashing bad mood.’
The commotion raised as the chastised men left masked Sulfin Evend’s cat step across the tent. Whether by instinct or the refined intuition of mage-sense, Earl Jieret felt the bearing pressure of the Lord Commander’s regard rest at last upon him; as though somehow, Lysaer’s dedicated Hanshire captain suspected some trick of binding spellcraft had allowed the Master of Shadow to slip through his line of Etarrans. His inimical survey could almost be felt, a steel probe slicing through skin.
The experience stayed unpleasant. Jieret knew visceral, crawling dread, the unnerved anticipation an animal at slaughter must feel, when stunned and stretched for the knife. The clan chieftain endured in harrowing darkness. His hold upon life had grown tenuously light. Death at the threshold would come as a friend on the hour when fate chose to knock. The last fear he harbored was not for himself, but for his crown prince’s survival.
The flooding anxiety raised for Arithon’s sake snapped the shackles over his mind. Jieret seized that opening and escaped. Swept into an eerie detachment by the gift of the raven’s teaching, his sensitized talent granted him vision beyond the limits of sight. In altered perception, he mapped the looming presence of the Lord Commander beside him. He watched in turn, as the pale, steadfast flame of Sulfin Evend’s oathsworn loyalty blazed up like the flare of fierce-burning phosphor.
Earl Jieret garnered the uncanny insight, that the man before him was hagridden. His bold, Hanshire arrogance masked a consuming concern, that his plans would be balked despite the extreme measures taken. Frustration spurred Sulfin Evend like live sparks, as though the hunch rode him, that somehow this victim, disarmed, broken, blinded, and mute, would contrive to slip through his fingers. The contest he waged with Rathain’s bound caithdein now trod on intangible footing.
The Earl of the North need do no more than stop breathing to triumph. His worth as a hostage to curtail the clan war bands would dissolve with his death, leaving Lysaer s’Ilessid no more than a rotting carcass.
No fool, Sulfin Evend apprised the spider-silk filament binding Jieret to life. ‘I want the captive dosed with a posset,’ he snapped. He would use every dirty tactic at hand, twist even the tools of the healer’s trade to forestall any chance of defeat. ‘Find whatever the camp bonesetter’s got in his stores to scatter the prisoner’s reason, or better, submerge his awareness in sleep.’
‘My lord?’ The guard dropped his carving in reflexive protest. ‘What under the Light do you think the sorry wretch can accomplish wrung limp as he is with grave injuries?’
‘He can think,’ Sulfin Evend replied. ‘That by itself makes him dangerous.’
The coarse scrape of mail and the jinking of spurs marked off his step to depart; then a pause, as he offered a rare explanation to steady his doubtful guard. ‘You’re too fresh to recall, man.’ Heightened prescience showed the bound man on the bed that Lysaer’s Lord Commander recalled the harsh lesson of Caolle’s last legacy. ‘But Deshir’s last clan war captain was once kept
alive by Koriathain after a fatal wounding. Even dying, he managed to take over three ships. Refitted them as the Shadow Master’s prizes, to the ruin of our southshore sea trade. That dog trained this one. Never doubt, we’ll still thrash the fiendish get of s’Valerient lineage long after the sire’s been dispatched to Sithaer.’
Jieret fought, first the bonds holding him, then the camp healer’s zealot assistant, arrived to carry out orders. He bit the knuckles of the hand that forced his mouth open. The first posset the Etarrans sought to pour down his throat spilled in the ferocity of the struggle, soaking the blankets and also the fresh bandage strapping his wounded shoulder.
‘Blazing furies!’ cracked the bite victim, his curse gritted rough as he took stock of the fingers laid open. ‘Barbarian’s deranged as a rabid wolf. Somebody else can change that damned dressing and give up their dry blankets to cover him.’
‘Orders,’ insisted the guardsman, laconic, while Jieret lay pinned, sweat streaked, and panting amid the rucked wads of his bedding. ‘We’re to keep him alive, no matter how cross-grained.’
‘Well, my master can treat him, and bleed for the privilege!’ The offended assistant snatched up his satchel and stamped off, trailed by the exasperated yell from the guard as he stormed on his way through the tent flap.
‘Better yet, send back the lads who doctor the oxen. They’ll have the muscle to hold the brute down. We’ll clean up the mess once your tincture takes hold. If you want, you can smash out his damnable teeth once he’s meek as a babe and knocked senseless.’
Footfalls went and came again, this time in heavyset force. Rammed flat by strong hands, Jieret smelled mud-splashed boot leather and the mustier fust of fabric stained pungent with iodine.
‘This time, we’ll use poppy,’ the healer announced, surly for the disruption keeping him from his rounds. ‘Triple the dose. Leave his teeth in his mouth. The drug won’t be kindly. Dharkaron Avenger will send yon clan devil his torment in the form of harrowing nightmares.’
‘Light avert!’ gasped the guard, no benediction spoken for Jieret’s sake, but a reflexive protest to cancel a heretical oath that invoked the ancient powers.
Incensed by that faith in Lysaer’s false cause, as well as the grinding ignominy of a life fallen prey to Alliance usage, Earl Jieret strained in redoubled effort. As his pack of armed keepers swayed off-balance, he burst a knot, tore chafed skin, and jerked one of the ties off his wrist. The victory won him no satisfaction. His blind strike at the guard was curtailed by mailed fists. Then the heavies who bullied the ox teams arrived, and he was knocked breathless and spread-eagled.
‘You loutish fools, you’ve reopened his shoulder!’ the healer carped from the sidelines. A knife blade was jammed between Jieret’s closed teeth, his jaws pried apart to a chipped grate of enamel. Someone wearing spiked gauntlets crammed a paste ball of poppy through his lips, then clamped his mouth shut by main force. Whether he swallowed or not never mattered. The wound that remained at the root of his tongue flooded the remedy into his bloodstream.
Pain faded first. The rambunctious talk of the enemies crowding his pallet subsided into a spray of meaningless noise.
Under the bandages wrapping his eyes, Jieret wept for the loss. He could do nothing, nothing at all, but tremble in assaulted outrage. The drugged juice whirled him dizzy, then pitched his awareness down and down, into the ink darkness of Sithaer’s nethermost pit.
After that, nothing touched him: not the fresh round of cautery to staunch his torn shoulder, or the hands which turned his head, set a knife to his nape, and hacked off the russet length of his clan braid. By then, he traversed a landscape of dream, cast beyond reach of physical pain, and whirled outside of bodily awareness.
The raven came. She folded jet wings, all the colors of night, and stood on his chest like a sentinel.
‘Help me,’ Jieret begged. ‘Let me not die enslaved.’
The bird regarded him, first with the left eye, then swiveled her head in fixed gaze with the unwinking right. As though she tested his plea for sincerity, she wasted an interval, preening.
Shackled in darkness, Jieret screamed for release. ‘Let me not break the blood bond I hold with Prince Arithon. On his life, my oath of service to the realm stands or falls. He is my sons’ and daughter’s irreplaceable stake in the future.’
The raven flapped her wings once and cawed, sharp and shrill with impatience.
‘By my Name,’ Jieret begged. The cry of his spirit swelled and cast rolling thunder across the cavernous vault of his dream. ‘Let the Fellowship Sorcerers rise to meet Rathain’s need. I grant free permission. Let them to do as need dictates. For the heritage of my forebears, I will bear the cost and the sacrifice.’
For one instant, the raven regarded him again, a chipped jet figure of limitless majesty. Then she dipped her head in salute, bent, and hammered her beak straight down into Jieret’s chest.
The blow punched through skin and muscle and bone, and pierced the core of his beating heart. He felt no pain. When the raven withdrew the black awl of her bill, there came no fountain of blood; no trauma of outraged sensation. Fear dissolved. Enveloped in a moment of childlike wonder, Jieret was consumed by a transcendent peace that blazed into a paean of welcome.
Then the raven spread dark wings and flew. A rising, spiraling giddiness arose, as the sucking wind of the void blew and whistled through the hole her presence left behind. As though some tangible mooring had been cut, Jieret felt a release. Caught like a sail in an updraft, his awareness launched upward and partnered the raven’s free flight.
The cloth wall of the tent posed him no barrier. Objects were not solid by the dictates of mage-sight; recast as loomed energies, the canvas became as substanceless as cloud vapor. Creature of wild magic, the bird passed straight through, and the man, a spirit unmoored from his laboring flesh, followed its swooping lead skyward.
The hills of Daon Ramon unfolded below, clothed in velvet snow. Brush brake and briar seamed the gullies like black stitching, with the muddy sprawl of the Alliance encampment a marring rickle of trampled ground. The sky overhead was a rinsed, gentian blue, and the cries of the officers, strident. Laced through the joined fabric of winter landscape, under its lid of clear air, the purl of lane forces glimmered and waned, a sparkle of tinseled embroidery.
Then across that tableau, an inflamed streak of scarlet, where dogs with no voice had been leashed into couples by human handlers to track down unnatural prey.
Jieret’s sight snagged on that thread of disharmony. The activity ignited the wish of his heart: that he should know whose footsteps they hunted. He beseeched assurance that the quarry hounded to flight was not the last Prince of Rathain.
A wingbeat ahead, the raven glanced back, the sunlight a sheen of metallic filigree on the edges of wind-riffled feathers. Creature of magic, the bird sounded the measure of the spirit she had drawn in tow, her eye an unwinking jet bead.
Then the black gaze swelled and swallowed all the world, hurling Jieret’s altered vision headlong into his gift of prescient Sight …
The first enemy patrol had not found Braggen because he had holed up under the cobwebbed, black timbers of a posthouse mule shed that had twice been damaged by fire. The neglected thatch leaked. The rest of the structure stayed standing through shoddy repairs because the grandame of the head hostler was a simples woman who knew a few spells to bind wood. Since her mother before that had been clanborn, her grandson was known to the scouts who raided the Mathorn trade road. For gold or for payment in contraband spirits, the man would sometimes harbor their wounded, or provide a fresh horse to a man pressed under closing pursuit.
At lawful need, the mule shed was used for overflow stabling, as shelter for hot-tempered stallions, or for mares in fresh heat who kicked and squealed, damaging stall boards while teasing the insolent geldings.
For that reason, nobody troubled to question the hoof marks leading to and from the inn’s gatehouse and the main stable.
By midafternoon, within the same hour as six couples of hounds, two appointed handlers, and Skannt’s best headhunter tracker left the Etarran camp and streamed over the hills toward the trade road, Braggen was touched gently awake.
He opened his eyes. Patches of afternoon blue shone through the singed thatch, and under them, the tousled brown hair and inquiring, grimed face of the hostler’s second-string groom.
‘The remounts you asked for are saddled and ready,’ the boy informed his illicit guest.
Braggen rolled and sat up, a gruff set to his lips for the twinging protest raised by his stiffened limbs. If the mere thought of straddling a horse felt like agony, he lacked time and resource to waste his breath in complaint. Expressionless, he brushed a stuck stem of timothy from his cropped bristle of beard. His blunt fingers had not lost their dexterity as he caught up the silk-wrapped sword he had slept on. A second glance reassured him: the bundled form of the prince still lay quiet beside him, packed safe as a goblet of Falgaire glass in a piled twist of straw bedding.
‘Provisions?’ he asked.
‘Packed in the saddlebags, along with a flask of neat spirits.’ The boy shot a strained glance over his shoulder. ‘There were riders, this morning,’ he admitted. ‘They stopped for mulled wine and asked after a man who’d pinched clothes from a sunwheel officer.’
Clad in his own forest leathers, Braggen finished the thought with gruff bluntness. ‘Nobody expected us, and so no one searched.’
But the next party who came making inquiry would not be as slack, or as trusting. If the posthouse was honest, the head hostler had a long nose for trouble. Friend to the gold the clans paid in exchange for his blind eye and his covert assistance, he likely sensed today’s fugitives were not routine scouts on a raid to lift some town courier’s state dispatches.