TWOLAS - 08 - Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  The rocked swing of the gimballed lamp was not kind, as the tears escaped those clamped fingers. Vhandon held on through the loss of his privacy, while

  Parrien poured two restorative glasses. Yet alike as he seemed to the brother now dead, his vulnerability was not as Keldmar's, which once had groped to find understanding through inept, but sincere camaraderie.

  'You'll tell me exactly what happened,' said Parrien s'Brydion with fixated attentiveness.

  No word, no touch, and no quickened breath moved his stillness throughout the dreadful report. By the end, he had heard every searing detail of Lysaer's first assault on the citadel. Not to console for the ruin and lost lives, or to bolster shocked nerves, never that; presented the face of a curse-bound disaster, Parrien's patience was as the adder's, that coiled to strike back in cold blood.

  late Autumn 5671

  Responses

  'I acknowledge our debt to Rathain and Alestron' King Eldir declares as he hands his horse off to a groom; then makes disposition to the sea-captain, braving her distrust of stable-yards to petition for aid: "The Crown of Havish will grant supply for the besieged citadel, on condition that you and your crew on the Evenstar will arrange the delivery on your own merits . . .'

  Caught while detailing the drills for green troops, Sulfin Evend stands frowning, as Lysaer's hound-faced valet reports that the Divine Prince's sleep has been broken by a feverish dream that carried the name of the Spinner of Darkness . . .

  Suffering a headache following his late rebuff by the Prince of Rathain, Bransian s'Brydion grinds frustrated teeth, until his overstrung duchess snaps first, and suggests the coercive option, 'If his Grace has come here to safeguard Jeynsa s'Valerient, then she is the pawn in your fist, and your leverage to bring him to heel. . .'

  Late Autumn 5671

  VIII. First Turning

  The gale broke by sundown, blown out to feathered clouds, and a brisk change of wind that fore-promised new ice on the rain barrels. Cold to the bone, with her hands scoured raw from the handling of quicklime and mortar, Jeynsa left her mixing paddle and hand-cart to the relief at the change of the watch.

  'Enjoy your turn, butty' she said to the breathless boy arrived for his shift on the sea-wall. 'No question, I've sanded my finger-tips raw!'

  Daylong, she had not questioned Talvish's orders, or the call for brute labour that annexed her to his company. If the duke's thwarted temper made him declare that the wharf-side embrasure required reinforcement, every hale person under s'Brydion protection was pressed forthwith to lay stone. Men cranked the winches and levered the cut blocks, while boys and strong women chipped facings and hauled in water and sand for the mixing troughs.

  Jeynsa never minded the rough, outdoor work. Despite sore hands, she would have stayed on, even welcomed the diversion to thwart Sidir's overbearing attention. Public presence alone averted the brangles that sparked, as she clashed with his tender authority.

  Fionn Areth had less reason to make himself scarce, and no reservation against mouthing off his latest inflaming opinion. Crammed onto the lift with chilled sentries and bone-weary citizens, he declared, 'I don't see how more masonry can stave off the hour we die of starvation.'

  Talvish heard, slit-eyed, from his place by the seaward blocks. This pass, he chose not to silence the fool, but stood back and let his grizzled campaign sergeant slap down the offence.

  'That's your grass-lander's ignorance speaking!' challenged Cortend, who still wore his gauntlets. 'If directed activity gives anyone hope, we are all better off.'

  'Break our backs for a lie?' Fionn Areth shot off, while the turn of the winches caught up the slack, and the freight lift crawled under load up the cliff-face. The Araethurian stayed undeterred by the rancourous stir on the crowded platform. He shouted over the grind of taut chains. That's the same hypocrisy played against the Light's victims. Or so you lay claim as the cause for this war!'

  Now, more than one tired veteran bristled. Several muscular townsfolk rocked onto their toes, incensed enough to start fisticuffs. Talvish's bark could have stalled the fresh fight.

  Yet the sergeant laced in, ahead of him. 'Let our honest craftsman find their sound sleep in the belief they've protected their families. Keep everyone busy, we won't get betrayed by some man's helpless rage, as he tries for relief by defection!'

  'Defection?' scoffed Fionn, 'Or just honest good sense, to dump pride and admit our position's untenable.'

  The sergeant settled by cocking his fist. His battering right hook clipped Fionn Areth on the jaw, snapped his head back, and reeled him into Jeynsa's startled embrace.

  'Serves the damned idiot right!' The sergeant flushed, unrepentant for blatant misconduct.

  Talvish chose to laugh off the infraction. 'Spared my knuckles a bruising against Araethurian flint, though you won't win my praise for the effort.' Subjected to Jeynsa's infuriated glower, he shrugged. Unsurprisingly, no one else moved to help her prop up the felled victim. The girl was left on her merits to choose whether to drop her unwitting charge in a half-conscious heap.

  Perversity won. Jeynsa elected to shoulder the load, if only to champion the brash underdog. Now hazed by the surly regard of the onlookers, she denounced, 'Even the stupidest gripe deserves kindness.'

  The scapegrace sergeant averted his glance, intent to avoid further trouble. The men-at-arms pinned under Talvish's eye also kept buttoned lips out of prudence. But pinched hunger and exhaustion goaded the displaced craftsfolk to lash back.

  'Ought to chuck out that one's whining carcass and give some joy to the feeding crabs.'

  A matron brandished an indignant fist. 'I've a hog in farrow that's much too thin to be tossing fresh meat off for carrion!'

  'Bait's a better idea,' yelled the gangling lad whose cousin walked rope for the chandler. 'Rot the choice bits and set a few traps! We'd be better off dicing the free-loader's liver to catch ourselves a fresh dinner.'

  Jeynsa shrugged. 'I say the victim can level his own scores.'

  For already, the icy gusts nipped the grass-lander back towards groggy awareness. He moaned, eyelids fluttering, then struggled against the locked grip that propped up his half-buckled knees.

  Wise enough for her years, Jeynsa clamped his weight, hard. 'Stay still, you numb nuts!' she snapped into his ear. 'Or get beaten silly. Sure's fire, you'd be less of a threat to yourself, triced in chains in the citadel's dungeon.'

  'Except the duke's puling justice just let the louse go!' a sharp-eared cooper denounced from the side-lines.

  Jeynsa's eyes widened. 'When?'

  Her darted glance caught Talvish off guard and swearing. Since he would not answer, she spun and accosted the burly man who had gossiped.

  'What happened?' she demanded, while the rising lift jolted, and plunged Fionn Areth from sheet white to the green of incipient nausea. 'What did I miss?'

  The loose-tongued cooper found himself cornered as the stopped hoist ground against the lift's block and tackle, and now rocked, suspended. Since no one could debark till the hands on the ledge swayed the davit over firm ground, the fellow caved in to appease the clan huntress's singeing attention. 'Well, lass, the snippet's no secret. Before dawn this morning, an armed escort wearing state dress was seen marching your pet through the public street. Looked like an arrest for a formal hearing. Since the bleating billy-goat's here, yapping off, the duke must've suspended his sentence.'

  'You say!' Jeynsa's riveted interest transformed, an epiphany cut short as the Araethurian raised protest, that no such arraignment had happened.

  'Ath above, do you never know when to shut up!' Jeynsa spun the grass-lander face about and shoved his jelly-legged bulk to the rail.

  Fionn Areth groaned, folded double and retching.

  'Heave up fast and be done!' Jeynsa hissed at a whisper. 'My plan worked! His Grace of Rathain's in Alestron, and I won't waste the moment playing your nurse-maid.'

  The platform jerked as the team at the winch locked the drum. More sweating stev
edores heaved on the lines and swung in the massive oak boom. Fionn Areth endured, grumbling. 'Of course your dastardly prince would show up. He times his appearances for sensation, then leaves his friends to smooth over the ripe inconvenience.'

  'And you don't do the same?' Jeynsa crowed.

  Fionn Areth paused, working his swollen jaw. 'My front tooth's chipped! Damn all to somebody's sourpuss fist. Have you also lost your sense of humour?'

  But Jeynsa had no more patience. On one count, at least, the goatherd was right: the loyal band of Arithon's allies already tightened their ranks.

  Tall and dark as a scowling post, Sidir stood waiting to meet her. Before Talvish joined forces against her, she grabbed Fionn Areth's fleece jacket and jerked his groggy frame upright. 'Come on, buffle-head! We can't dawdle, even for you to be sick. Or we'll both lose the bid for our destiny.'

  Yet as rudely fast as she elbowed her way down the lowered gangway, Sidir breasted the outbound shove of bodies and blocked her.

  Nor was the Companion any less wind-burned from his thankless wait, standing vigil. 'You can't find him without me,' he declared forthwith. As Jeynsa took issue, he crushed her tirade. 'Give way. Now! Take my offer of backing. In hindsight, you're likely to thank me.'

  Talvish arrived. Prepared to use muscle, his jade eyes took the girl's measure, then Sidir's flint glance of warning. 'Where is your liege waiting?' he asked with clipped tact. Never a glance, from those steel-sharp, cold eyes, as his reflex shot out a lightning fist and saved Fionn Areth from crumpling under the shock of his bruise.

  Sidir held his tongue for an irritable moment, while the gusts lashed his shorn hair against his gaunt cheek. 'Dame Dawr's,' he revealed, and even for him, the admission was savagely brief.

  Talvish stared, poleaxed. 'Well,' he remarked with a lift of arched eyebrows, 'we're forewarned, if caught disadvantaged.' As the tired, impatient folk on the hoist rammed against his obstructive presence, he moved on, herding Jeynsa ahead of him. 'Ill-dressed and unwashed as we are, it won't matter. The field's hand-picked and laid for the blood-bath.'

  Lest Fionn Areth try to duck out, the field-captain firmed his grip as he matched Sidir's lead. 'Since when has this Teir's'Ffalenn ever welcomed an encroachment upon his kept privacy? We may as well march in there, shamefaced, and see whether the s'Brydion dowager's leveraged the bollocks to handle him.'

  * * *

  The person was an idiot, who voluntarily paraded hurt flesh or bruised pride, or unkempt attire before Dawr s'Brydion. Talvish knew as much; had watched seasoned fighting men lashed to boy's tears by the old woman's caustic style. Yet as the party bound for a crown audience passed through her wrought-iron gate, his nerve stayed resolute. He unstrapped his steel helm. Paused in the windy twilight, he laced dirt-rimed fingers through his rumpled blond hair. That laughable gesture complete, he tapped on the door to the apartment that housed Bransian's grandame in time of siege.

  Both he and Sidir stayed deaf to pity. The young pair under their escort were not to be offered the chance for a slinking retreat. Sidir blocked the narrow, arched portal behind. He would keep the royal charge and bring Jeynsa with drawn knives, to judge by his death's-head expression.

  Desperation failed to invoke mercy. The pretty carved door with its paned, amber glass already swung wide to admit them.

  'Dawr doesn't nurse wounds,' Mearn s'Brydion warned, before words of greeting or welcome.

  Poised in the lit entry, his avid regard had already fixed on the ice shard Fionn Areth held pressed to his jaw.

  'You don't say!' Fionn Areth mumbled past his crude remedy. "The old besom expects us to be decked out like bawds, in gewgaws and fripperies for dancing?'

  'Ah! Did we neglect the engraved invitation?' Mearn flourished the neat, feathered cap on his head. 'So sorry, stripling. You have learned to read?'

  Mearn flitted aside before a victimized hamfist could swipe at him. Jewels flared under the single sconce candle that burned on the lower landing: in fact, the youngest brother s'Brydion was groomed for the ball-room, silk-shod and clad in a red velvet doublet. The facing was edged with black ribbon and fire opal studs. By contrast, his dark hose and white shirt were both plain, the lace cuffs that should accent such finery spared from snags on his warfaring calluses.

  At total ease, Mearn struck off up the stairway, still chattering in cool sympathy to Fionn Areth. 'By Dawr's parlour creed, any injury gotten by fighting amounts to a stupid mistake. "Lick your own hurts, and learn how to think so that next time, you watch where you step!" She said that to Parrien once, when he crawled in bawling and expected her help to dry his snotty tears during boyhood.'

  Talvish snorted. 'You refer to the time he broke both his hands, picking brawls with the blacksmith's apprentice?'

  'My brother was always a bullying ox,' Mearn agreed. To the Araethurian, he resumed, 'Dawr refused to call her private physician. She left the lame duck to drive himself across town to seek ease at the garrison bone-setter's. An awkward predicament, since no one but me dared her wrath to help harness the cart-horse.' Arrived at the stair-head, Mearn never paused, but pushed open another carved door. 'I was four.' Across the tight-shuttered, unlit ante-room, he resumed his grim reminiscence. 'The blighted chestnut cob mashed my finger, inept as I was with the bit. I chose to soak the crushed knuckle in the horse-trough, then arranged to fall in, head first.'

  He paused and glanced backwards. 'That part was to hide the fact I was crying.' His smile was a crocodile's. 'Not much you can do for that bruising you've earned. The raw beef's all been smoked into jerky.' As he finished, his strong, narrow hand turned the knob and flung open the last double panel.

  'You've arrived' he declared. 'There's the dowager's sitting-room. You're to go in directly, and may Dharkaron Avenger himself show you lot the swift spear of mercy.'

  Light and warmth spilled through the widening doorway, made mellow by a melting peal of plucked strings: Arithon, inside, was tuning the lyranthe inherited from Halliron Masterbard.

  'Ath love the tail-wagging arse of a goat, here's a farce!' Fionn Areth threw down his ice-and-rag compress and balked.

  Touched thoughtful, Talvish stopped short of collision and shot off a glance of calm inquiry.

  Mearn shrugged in return. Before the battery of Jeynsa's corked fury, and Sidir's testy stare, ranged behind her, he said, 'Arithon's granted a concert for Dame Dawr. By his royal preference, you're asked to attend.' He gestured, polite, for his guests to precede him. 'Mind your manners. Piss and vinegar aside, my grandmother hasn't been well.'

  "The great lady's not ill,' contradicted a quiet voice from within, each silken word stamped by edged consonants. 'Not yet. Though she will be, if she continues to lose the core value that drives her to live.'

  'He's alone!' Jeynsa knew her antagonist. The prince who had thrashed her defences in Halwythwood always would speak his true mind. Yet the blunt words just let fly were not aimed in the old woman's presence. Primed to rage, the young clanswoman shoved towards the doorway to challenge her nemesis.

  Sidir might have stopped her. Since he made no move, Talvish followed suit, in no mood to be caught up in the fierce confrontation. 'Let her go!' he urged Fionn Areth, who also, unwisely, surged past and crossed the lit threshold.

  Mearn grinned like a fox. 'But we've all been invited.' His step at the grass-lander's heels was not brash. 'If the promised performance springs for the throat, my coin's on Dame Dawr. Hale or not, she'll draw the first blood.'

  Inside, the small chamber was curtained and still, gently washed in the glow of an oil-lamp. Stuffed chairs faced a table arranged with a tray, and a low divan with lion's claw legs. The birch logs ablaze on the merled, marble hearth shed a comfort not seen since the siege tightened grip on the citadel. The decor was tasteful, resplendent, restrained. Amid the gleam of bronze finials, upon damask upholstery flourished with tassels, the graceful, Paravian-made lyranthe commanded the room. The scintillant glints thrown off abalone-shell inlay framed a living grace,
captured in light.

  In fact, the bard was alone with his instrument. His uncut jet hair had been tied at the nape, a harsh style not meant to mask the expression just now obscured by his bent head.

  The adornment of jewels would have been wasted. His fine build was exquisitely set off by the severity of his attire. These clothes were not borrowed: the lustrous pearl silk of the shirt-sleeves, and the dense, emerald doublet had been finished to the highest standard. The jet studs set in silver that pinned his cuffs flared and died, to the snapping strike of quick fingers. He said nothing more, but tested each string in a sequence of bell-tone harmonics.

  'I should have guessed,' Jeynsa stated, her scornful tone charged for mayhem.

  The lyranthe cut her off. Notes showered and cascaded through falling arpeggios, through which lyric space, Arithon finished her vicious denouncement. 'That I would be found cosseted in the shelter of a woman, idle enough to solicit a warmed niche and expensive new clothing? How insightful of you to presume that your hostess tonight has nothing but frivolous preferences.'

  'Dame Dawr's seamstresses took his Grace's measure, last summer,' Mearn's tart assault interjected. 'The old bat's always been an insatiable tyrant on issues concerning propriety.'

  'In her presence, alas, even renegade royalty is obliged to dress to crown rank.' Arithon glanced up. His impervious eyes were bright, even dancing. Neat hands, still busy, refused interruption. 'The lady's writ ordered the pretty cloth, Jeynsa. I understand that her seamstress was commissioned on the hour that Duke Bransian joined your conspiracy.' The observation delivered no sting. Behind razored words, he was smiling.

  Jeynsa sucked in a breath. One forgot at one's peril, after months in the artless company of Fionn Areth: this face, and this man, with his rapacious intellect, could never be mimicked in counterfeit. Caught in grimed clogs, with her boy's woollen breeches crusted with quicklime, she dared not sit down on Dame Dawr's heirloom furniture. Cold to the bone, she resisted the sweet lure of the fire: fought not to fall to the presence that towered behind this show of disarming humour.