The Pity Stone (Book 3)

by Tim Stead

  He had done his best to ensure that his end of the chain appeared strong. After Hestia’s trick had been exposed by the Durander mage he had flooded his walls with men, and even resorted to trickery to make them seem more then they were. He had pulled men from the inner forts, used barrels to hold spears above the battlements, dredged up every trick he had been taught and invented a few on his own.

  This was his solution.

  He had thought it through for days. Hestia’s ruse to point the enemy to his end of the chain had been clever, but the motive had been weak – the preservation of her own power. Skal’s motive, and his execution of the ruse, was superior in every way. He sought nothing less than total victory.

  He went down from the walls and found a few men who could act as an honour guard. He did not want to venture into Telan territory alone, at least not with the message he had to deliver. He feared that they might attack him, and then they would discover what he was, and that alone might be enough to break the alliance, even though Hestia, too, was Farheim, though he was certain she would do her utmost to hide the fact.

  He went down below the fort and through the connecting tunnels, dimly lit by small lamps, just enough to see the way. He passed the second and third forts which he also controlled. At length he came to the third door. This marked the boundary between what his Avilians held and those forts under Hestia’s control. It had seemed odd to him that there had been so little intercourse between the two forces at first. They had been comradely enough on the road, but now that he had learned of Hestia’s ruse he understood. She could not afford to have Avilians wandering about and learning her secret.

  He banged on the door. A small window opened and a Telan face peered out.

  “What do you want?”

  “Lord Skal Hebberd to see Queen Hestia,” he said. “Council of war.” There was a moment of disconcerted muttering behind the man, and footsteps raced away.

  “I have sent a messenger,” the Telan face said. “We will await the queen’s word.”

  Skal nodded so that the face could see, and stood, legs set wide, in the middle of the passageway. It was a pose that conveyed impatience in a lordly manner. It said: surely you don’t expect me to wait long?

  The minutes ticked by. Skal imagined the messenger gaining access to Hestia, delivering his message. She would take a moment to think, then give our orders that would take men down from the walls, stripping them of their excess compliment so that he would not see and know. When it was done she would send the messenger back.

  Seven minutes. The footsteps came running back down the corridor beyond the door. Whispered words.

  “The queen will see you, Lord Skal,” the face said. There was a sound of bolts being drawn, the shrieking protest of a rusty hinge, and the door opened. There were five men there. The face was a captain.

  “I will escort you myself,” the captain said.

  They went on. The three doors beneath the Telan forts were open, and they marched through quickly, mounting stairs in the last until they came up within the keep, and finally to a door that was guarded by two large soldiers, heavily armed and armoured. The captain nodded, and the two men stood aside, allowing the officer to push through the door. Once inside he, too, stood aside, and Skal indicated that his own men should wait outside with the Telans.

  “Lord Skal. I am pleased that you choose to visit me.” She was dressed like a queen, a dress of blue and gold, a gold band that hinted at a crown set about her head, and she looked supremely beautiful, Skal thought, draped across a chair that was doing its best to pass for a throne. She looked deliberately casual, which in itself was a kind of formality that Skal was familiar with. It was an implied superiority.

  He bowed, half bowed as a lord should to a lady, and that was formal, too. It told her that she was not his queen. “I am honoured by your favourable greeting, Queen Hestia,” he said. “But I come with grave news of the war. May we speak alone?”

  Hestia was not stupid. She knew that he had something to say that might not please her subjects, and she hesitated for only a moment.

  “Captain, you may leave us,” she said.

  “My queen…” the man started to protest. He did not want to leave his monarch alone in the company of a foreigner, even one who had been in that situation many times before.

  “Go,” she snapped. “Lord Skal is no threat. I owe him my life twice over.”

  The captain retreated. The door closed. Hestia smiled.

  “What is it, Lord Skal?”

  “You will be attacked within three days,” he said.

  “Me?”

  “This fort. This end of the chain. They will come soon.”

  She looked momentarily confused, but then her eyes narrowed. “How do you know this?”

  “It is time,” he said. “They have begun to burn their dead, and they will attack what they see as the weaker end of the chain.” He pulled a chair from the side of the room and sat down in front of Hestia. “I saw your ruse, the men on the walls. I doubled it.”

  She laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “I should have known better that to try to trick you, Lord Skal. It seems I have been outplayed.”

  “Nonsense. It was a good idea, but you should have spoken to me first. I will lend you five hundred infantry to meet the assault. That should be enough to repulse them without weakening your other forts.”

  “That is… generous. Why?”

  “Have you forgotten that we are on the same side, Hestia? I have not. Seth Yarra is our enemy.”

  “You will not shame me, Lord Skal. These men are the army of Telas – all of it. You have but one regiment of Avilians, one of many, and you equal our number. I cannot spend my men as freely as you.”

  “I assure you that I am a miser when it comes to that currency. But it is my intent to use their attack to defeat them.”

  “How?”

  “I will use Durander magic,” he said.

  Hestia was quite still for a moment, as though uncertain of the words she had heard.

  “Durander magic?” She breathed the question as though the words were some kind of poison, and Skal thought he might have made a mistake. “You have a mage in your pocket, then?”

  “I have one who is willing to help.”

  “It is a trick,” she was vehement now, her voice coloured by certainty. “They will use the chance to kill me.”

  “It is what they said of you,” Skal replied. “But Seth Yarra is their enemy as much as ours. The mage will help. It is the only way to win.”

  “I cannot countenance this,” Hestia said. “The Duranders cannot be trusted. Whatever they say they will do something else. You must not speak with them again.”

  “You do not command me, Queen Hestia. I am Avilian. I am your ally, nothing more.”

  “If you go ahead with this, the alliance is broken.” She stared at him, daring him to say that it was so.

  “I had hoped that you would be more farsighted than this,” Skal said. “The Duranders have the most to fear from Seth Yarra. Their way of life is the most different from the invaders’ plan, their precious book. This hatred that has been nurtured in you cannot be based on experience, because there is none. You squabble with the Duranders as we squabble with the Berashis. In this war such things do not matter.”

  “Do not speak to me as a child, Lord Skal. How dare you tell me, Queen of Telas, what the Duranders are to us?”

  “I have studied your history. I think you will find, if you examine it with a neutral eye, that neither you nor the Duranders have any particular cause to hate one another. It is merely a tradition.”

  Hestia’s face was flushed. He had never seen her so angry. He had pusher her far enough. His hope was that she might consider his words once he had gone, and that her native intelligence would tell her that he was right. He hoped that she could rise above the prejudice that had been drummed into her as a child. For now there was no more to be said or done.

  “You will…”
<
br />   “I will take my leave of you, Queen Hestia,” he interrupted, another offence, and one designed to underline his disappointment.

  “I have not finished with you!” she shouted.

  “Remember what I am,” he said, turned on his heel and walked to the door. If he had been an ordinary man she would have had him detained, punished even. An Avilian lord, even one who had done her great service, would not be immune from such treatment. But Skal was Farheim, and a good blade before he was that. If her men tried to restrain him hundreds would perish by his sword. This she knew.

  His judgement was correct. She did not speak again, and Skal departed her fortress without further trouble, walking quickly back along the connecting tunnels until he came to the first Avilian guards.

  “Bolt the doors,” he told them. “Allow none to pass save the queen herself. If they try to force the door, collapse the tunnel.”

  His men looked at him in surprise. Collapsing the tunnel meant the Telans were hostile, and they were in Telas, pinned in a Telan fort by ten thousand Seth Yarra. It was not a desirable position, being so far from succour with enemies on two sides.

  “All will be well,” he reassured them. “Victory is near.”

  Victory indeed. A thousand Avilian cavalry attacking the rear of an unsuspecting Seth Yarra army. They would be ground between his men and the castle walls.

  Now all he had to do was wait.

  Thirty – Cain

  Cain’s dinner with the mayor went well. Tilian had arrived at the end of the first course when the mayor, a man who on closer acquaintance smelled faintly of fish, had been generous with Cain’s wine, especially to himself. The man was in expansive mood, and treated Tilian like the hero he was. He listened, awestruck, as Tilian gave his report to Cain.

  A roaring success.

  But Cain was still worried. Tilian reported killing approximately three hundred Seth Yarra. An equal force had marched north, and by now would have met the Avilian army and been destroyed. There were still four hundred the other side of Golt on the Afaeli border, and it was his job to solve that little problem. They had fortified their position. Jidian had seen it. Cain had the misfortune to have never seen a Seth Yarra position. He had been told about the one at Finchbeak, and one of the officers who frequented the Seventh Friend had drawn him a sketch last winter, so he thought he knew what to expect, but seeing was seeing, as Sheyani was fond of reminding him, and there was no substitute.

  Still, he had a thousand men. He had Sheyani and her pipes. He would prevail.

  The morning after the mayor had been escorted on his unsteady return to the town of Berrit Bay Cain took his men once more up the eastern cliff road and set out for Golt and the enemy that lay beyond it. The journey would take four days.

  His information was already three days old, so it would be wrong a week when they sighted the Seth Yarra camp. That worried him, because he knew about the ships that cruised off the shore. There could be eight hundred men waiting for him when he got there, or even a thousand, and cavalry were little use against ditches and stakes.

  But there was nothing that he could do about it. He had his orders, and would follow them.

  He had sent a rider back to Bas Erinor with news of Tilian’s victory, and a suggestion that the captain be honoured once more. The young man had achieved a bloodless victory when outnumbered fifteen to one, and Tilian’s Ghosts were become a name that people swore by in Avilian. He had even suggested that Tilian had played his part and should travel back to Bas Erinor with his men to enjoy a well earned rest, but Tilian had refused. Cain was unwilling to make it an order. He valued enthusiasm and a sense of duty.

  So they rode eastwards.

  It was not particularly cold. The sun made a welcome appearance most days, and the sea breeze, when it blew, was a warming breeze. Each night they camped on open ground, sentries set, and slept untroubled by intruders and alarms.

  Sheyani had become introspective. She spoke little, and spent her evenings in meditation. Cain missed her attention, but he knew better than to disturb her. If she was behaving in this odd manner it was because she needed to. It was important. He trusted her completely.

  On the third day they passed Golt. Or that was Cain’s intention. They sighted the city mid morning, and it was a pretty sight. Golt was the royal city of Avilian, and because untidiness offended the king it was a tidy city. The walls, built in the ancient style, sloped gently between strictly vertical towers. The walls were made of sandstone, and the place lived up to its billing as the golden city.

  Beyond the walls Cain could see towers and spires, as though the entire city was populated by palaces, and well it might be. Cain had never entered Golt. In all his life he had never set foot across its gate lines, and he admitted to himself that he was curious, but one did not enter Golt without a summons, and now was not the time. They were riding to war. But Cain’s eyes kept being drawn back to the city. The towers of Golt glittered in the winter sun. They were not simple stonework, many of them being dressed in tiles of red and blue, green and gold. Flags of a thousand designs fluttered in the sea breeze from the forest of towers, and he could not name one of them.

  He had varied their line of march north of the road, which led to the city gates. He intended to pass a mile clear of the city, but shortly before they made their closest approach one of his officers rode up beside him.

  “Men approach, colonel,” he pointed.

  Sure enough there was a small column of horse galloping out from the city on a course designed to intercept them. He estimated thirty or forty men, and gave the order for his small army to stop and await their arrival.

  He was impressed that his own men waited in silence. There was no idle chatter. Perhaps they were tired. Whatever the reason they stood in brown meadow grass and their dust cloud drifted away while the column of horse thundered towards them.

  Cain watched them draw close. They were fine horsemen. They rode in good order, cloaks flying, metal jingling, their animals in a neat double line as though they were exercising on a parade ground rather than riding over rough country.

  As they reined to a halt before him he could see their scarlet and gold uniforms, burnished helmets, jewelled swords. Their mounts were similarly adorned, draped in red velvet, reins and bridles decorated with silk and gold. There was enough value in their trappings to pay his men for a month.

  He allowed them to speak first.

  “We will have your name and your business,” the officer said. He had his hand on the hilt of his sword, his head thrown back in arrogant superiority, but the dust clung to him everywhere. He looked like a dishevelled prince. Cain looked across at Sheyani, and shared a resigned look with her. A glance at Tilian was enough to see that his bow was no longer on his back, but across the front of his saddle. All Tilian’s men were the same. A slight shake of his head was enough.

  “I am Colonel Cain Arbak, Regiment of the Seventh Friend,” he said. “My business is fighting the war.”

  For a moment the glittering officer’s arrogance wavered. He had clearly heard the name. But it was a moment only. He was an officer of the King’s Guard, his uniform shrieked it, and he was not going to be intimidated by a new minted lord with a few victories to his name.

  “And these men,” he pointed to Tilian’s small, scruffy band. They wore nothing that resembled a uniform, but as was their custom dressed as foresters. “What are they?” His eyes had not missed Tilian’s bow.

  “Captain Tilian Henn, knight of Avilian, victor of Narak’s Forest and Berrit Bay, and a portion of his command,” Cain told him. This had even more effect on the guardsman. Cain saw his eyes widen.

  “You must come with me,” he said.

  “We are riding to war,” Cain protested. “There are Seth Yarra little more than a day’s ride from here.”

  “They are no threat,” the officer said, and he clearly meant that they were no threat to Golt with its strong walls and powerful garrison, no threat to the king.
/>
  “They must be dealt with,” Cain said. “All of Avilian does not live behind such fine walls.”

  If the guardsman recognised the insult he did not show it. He eased his mount closer to Cain and lowered his voice. “I would gladly ride with you, Colonel, but if the king learns that such names rode past Golt and were not brought before him my commission will be worth less than dressmaker’s rags. You will follow me. I command it on behalf of your king.”