by Glenda Larke
Beargold, lying on the other side of Lord Juster, grunted his agreement. “They don’t respond like normal men,” he said. “Think of… cornered animals, but unlike animals their aim is to slaughter with as much pain as possible. Give no quarter, because you’ll get none. They don’t know fear. Worse, they prefer not to kill cleanly.”
They all heard the touch of remembered horror in his voice.
“No sorcerers that I can feel,” Saker said. “Sorrel is down there somewhere, though.”
“I thought she was going with Ardhi,” Juster said.
“So did I. I’m not sure exactly where she is, but she’s somewhere on this side of the holdfast. The glow of her witchery – it’s over there.” He gestured in the direction he meant and sighed. “She does tend to do what she wants, not what we want, and usually does it fobbing brilliantly too.”
Prince Ryce grunted. “I remember. But what does she think she’s doing down there now? If we attack, she might be killed.”
Saker, who’d been attempting not to dwell on that same nauseating thought, rolled over on to his back. “Your Highness, I’m going to twin with the eagle rather than just link with it. That means my body will appear as if I am in a deep sleep. If you can, wait for me to wake up before you order an attack.”
He did not tell the prince just how vulnerable flying with the bird left him, but Juster said with the faintest of smiles, “I’ll ask one of my men to keep the ants off you while you nap.”
Closing his eyes, he sought the mind of the raptor circling above, almost beyond the range of a human eye. His heart soared at the thought of flying, and he wondered if there would come a day when he wouldn’t want to return.
23
Gunpowder and Blood
After descending to the edge of the encampment, Sorrel found a cleaner spot to hunker down while she watched and waited for the right moment to make her move. There was nothing to indicate a sorcerer anywhere nearby. No smutch that she could detect, nor any faint glow of a perverted witchery.
She kept an eye on the largest and most impressive of the tents, which had a grubby flag featuring a red fox flapping tiredly on a pole at one end. Her patience was rewarded when a man emerged and walked to the nearest of the cooking fires, where he seated himself on a bench, demanding food and drink. When it didn’t come fast enough for him, he swore. She was accustomed to the swearing of sailors, but the language he used was so vile her eyes widened.
As the soldiers scuttled around to bring him what he wanted, she opened up the bark around the mullein tinder, exposing the hot coal to the air. Once the outside skin of the ember brightened and the mullein started to scorch, she approached the tent. She heard nothing from inside, so she sidled around to the opening at the front, moving slowly to maintain her glamour easily.
The wailing cry of an eagle made her look up. The dark shape of the raptor was high enough to avoid any shot from an arrow, too high for her to see any details, but when it waggled its wings in a gesture that was more Saker than bird, she knew he was there. She raised a hand in acknowledgement and pulled a face at him that an eagle’s eyesight would see. With a deep flap of its wings, the bird turned in a tight circle. She pointed up the slope to where she had entered the valley, and then raised two fingers.
Two minutes.
She hoped he would know what she meant, and indeed there was another waggle, before it sailed across the holdfast, heading to where Ardhi’s company was waiting for the signal to attack the encampment on the other side.
Turning back to the task in hand, she twitched the tent flap far enough to peer in. The space inside was empty.
A quick glance over her shoulder at the Grey Lancers told her she was still unobserved, so she slipped inside. The tension she’d felt since leaving the cove was taking its toll. For a moment, safe within the canvas walls, she let her glamour drop.
She expected to see some comforts inside; after all, for months this had probably been the home of someone senior – an officer – but there were no cots, no table, no chairs, just a single wooden chest and an untidy heap of bedding strewn on dirty straw.
Wasting no time, she placed the now smoking tinder in the middle of the bedding, and turned to go.
The same man who had left a few minutes earlier was in the tent opening, frozen by shock in a half-stooped position.
She was still unglamoured.
They stared at each other. It must only have been a moment, but it felt like an age.
He moved first. He stepped inside and let the flap drop behind him.
Her thoughts raced. He wasn’t a sorcerer, just a dangerous man – that went without saying. Middle-aged. Unafraid. Dirty. Not wearing a sword, but with a dagger thrust through his belt.
His eyes narrowed and his lips twisted upwards at the corners. A predator’s smile.
He failed to notice or smell the tinder smoking in the bedding.
It would be useless to try to disappear behind her glamour; that wouldn’t deceive him now that he’d seen her just a pace away.
As one, they both drew their daggers, but she glamoured the kris into a shorter, blunter instrument and hoped he wouldn’t notice its real shape. It felt comfortable in her hand. She returned his smile.
“Well, well, well. Someone’s gifted me a fobbing mawk! Whose whore are you?” he asked.
“The prince of Gromwell’s. Are you going to be man enough for me, or will you look for the pox on the gift?”
He blinked, wondering just what she meant. Which must have been difficult, given that she was spewing the first words that came into her head. He reached out to grab her arm with his free hand. The kris reacted even more quickly than she did, slashing past his outstretched fingers in warning.
“You have to catch me first,” she said and danced sideways. She broadened her smile, wanting to appear harmless yet enticing, even as she held the dagger between them.
“Playing hard to get? Come here, my sweet, and explain just how you got in here, or I’ll carve off your pretty tits!”
Va-damn him. How was she going to extricate herself without alerting the whole camp?
Even as she hesitated, the tinder on the bedding flared. The wool of the blanket scorched, fibres curling black, smoke rising. The lancer turned his head to look. The kris jerked forward. He saw the movement out of the corner of his eye and moved to deflect the blade with his own. She held tight as he resisted the forward movement of the kris. Her wrist bent under his strength and his dagger moved closer. The kris twisted at the last moment, slashing his hand and angling upwards. He gave a curdling cry. She tried to flinch away from his blade, but unbalanced and off-kilter, she fell into him. The point of his weapon passed between her left side and her arm, slicing through clothing, then deeper. Pain erupted across her ribs.
They fell together, entangled. Her grip was still tight on the hilt of the kris.
Pushing herself away from him, she felt the blade slide into his flesh. She had stabbed him under the chin, the blade passing through into his mouth. He was still alive, thrashing underneath her. The hilt of the kris was jammed tight.
Next to them, the bedding was alight and the tent was filling with smoke.
Still gripping the kris hilt, she pulled hard and leaped to her feet. Blood followed the path of the blade, gushing from his mouth and neck. She struggled to form her glamour. Smoke swirled, flames licking at the tent canvas. She coughed and pain made her howl. Her assailant thrashed at her feet, spasming, spattering blood. She found the tent flap and staggered into the open air, gasping. Everything had happened so fast.
Outside, she tried again to form her glamour. Her side hurt. She needed to see what was wrong. When she touched her clothing, her hand came away sticky and red. She slipped the kris still covered in blood back into its sheath.
Ardhi wouldn’t like that. Sri Kris wouldn’t like it either…
If only she didn’t hurt so much.
Glamour.
Blend into the ground. Into the colour
of the stones… soil… dead grasses. Run towards the cart track. Easier. Uphill, but not nearly so steep.
Anything rather than go back over that awful midden.
She stumbled to the road, aware her glamour was patchy. She couldn’t concentrate.
Someone yelled behind her.
She risked a glance. Men were running this way and that. Shouting too, but not at her. At least she didn’t think so. They were looking at the tent. Smoke was pouring out of it. The wall on one side was charring; she could see the flames licking through the holes.
Of the man she’d stabbed, there was no sign.
When she reached the track, she ducked down behind the dray to catch her breath. Slipping to her knees on the dried ridges of the sun-baked wheel ruts, she leaned her forehead on a wooden spoke, pressing a hand to the wound in her side. Blood escaped through her fingers. No pulsing, just oozing. That was good, wasn’t it?
Her side was a throbbing mess of pain. Peering around the tail-board, she saw lancers converging on the tent, beating at the flames. Two men were carting water from the stream in buckets. Someone had pulled the officer out of the remains of the tent, but he was clearly dead. Her mouth went dry. She’d killed again.
Don’t be stupid about it. If he wasn’t dead, you would be.
Flames licked through the dried grass, and there were frantic shouts as men realised the fire could spread to the rest of the encampment. One of the men gestured towards the wagon, saying something urgently to another, and they both turned to look.
And saw her.
She could no longer hold her glamour. She felt as weak as a butterfly in a storm, close to passing out. Thinking was increasingly difficult. Fuzzy around the edges.
The two men stared, shocked. No, fearful.
Why?
The answer came on the heels of the question. They weren’t scared of her. It was the gunpowder.
The kris was in her hand again, although she couldn’t remember drawing it out of its sheath. She smiled, knowing just how to use it this time. She reached up to one of the casks, broke the wax seal around the edges of the wooden bung and levered it out. She pulled the keg, one-handed, over the edge of the dray. It hit the ground and began to roll down the slope, bouncing and tumbling, leaving a trail of gunpowder behind. One of the men turned tail and fled. The second, braver, tried to stop it before it reached the spreading grass fire around the burning tent.
As he ran to intercept it, she edged the bung out of a second keg and pushed it to the ground, where it tumbled down the slope after the first. The third was harder. Her strength was dying, as if it was draining out of her with her blood. And why were her ears pounding so? The third keg she toppled to the ground without bothering to remove the bung.
She didn’t see where it rolled. Her knees gave way and she fell.
Her last coherent thought was that she had to flee. Something about gunpowder and a fire. She was no longer clear about the details, but it seemed important. She started to crawl along the rutted track, intent on putting as much distance as she could between herself and the dray.
Nothing else seemed to matter.
As usual, Saker had to battle the eagle for control, and also as usual, he won and then felt guilty.
It took him a moment to adjust to the view of the world from above. His customary joy in flight lifted his spirits until he was flooded with wonder that he alone knew what it was like to fly. The bird – it, he, Saker – spiralled upwards, deep, strong wingbeats that he felt to the very core, rejoicing in the first touch of uplift, of air that swept his form higher without effort. Oh, the lightness of it, the glorious freedom! He tilted his wings with the merest adjustment of feather fingers, rising on the warm air until he felt he was out of the range of even the luckiest arrow shot. He eyed the land below, revelling in the perfection of an eagle’s vision, in its ability to see the tiniest of field mice in a meadow. It was hungry, and Saker felt its hunger gnawing at his insides, scorning anything except fish or sea snakes.
Careful. You are Saker Rampion, not a bird. Remember your humanity. But, oh, sometimes that was difficult.
He followed the thread of the stream, banks littered with tents, to where he had seen the glow of Sorrel’s witchery. There he found the cart track trailing across the low hills like a ribbon heading straight to the castle door. He spotted her glow again, near a dray drawn up just past the bridge, and found her outside a tent.
Fear cut across the duality of his mind, and the bird pressed to be allowed to go, to find the sea… He imposed his will and it turned its frustration into a screaming cry. Below, Sorrel lifted her face to look at him. At the bird. At them.
He waggled his wings. Eagle wings.
She raised her hand to point away from the camp, away from the holdfast, then gestured with a raised two fingers. It was a signal Juster’s crew used on board ship for a lapse of time when the noise of cannon fire drowned out voices.
Two minutes. She would be out of there in two minutes. She was smiling. He tried not to think about what she was going to do, or of all the things that could go wrong.
He waggled his wings again and shot across the sky looking for the second party from Golden Petrel. As he flew above Gromwell, he marvelled at the damage done and the way Prince Ryce and his men had bolstered the walls from inside with dirt. Deep holes dug in the baileys told the story.
From this height, everything was laid out like a map, and his keen eyesight soon picked up Ardhi and the other men from the ship. Well away from them, he pulled in his wings and swooped fast, aiming for the copse of trees behind the lines of besiegers. Once there, he levelled off and overflew the copse, implanting the idea of what he wanted in the bird’s mind. He’d watched sea eagles building nests in Karradar, and he knew what he asked was possible.
The bird flew low over the leafy canopy, searching, then circled back. This time it dipped to grasp a suitable dead twig in a taloned foot as it passed. Dry and rotten, it snapped off. Gripping it, the sea eagle flapped to gain height. It struggled to rise with the unwieldy stick in its claws, but gradually, with strong beats, it found the rising air. With another screeching call to gain the attention of the men on the ground, the stick was dropped, the message relayed telling them Ryce was in place, ready to attack.
He set the eagle to return the way they had come, promising it the chance to go fishing soon. Within a minute or two he was back over the Grey Lancers’ encampment, searching to make sure Sorrel was gone.
The large tent where he’d seen her only a few minutes before was on fire, and the fire had spread. Flames and sparks shot high into the air, followed by billowing smoke and a booming sound. Two more explosions followed, blossoming outwards in violent paroxysms of fiery air. When the smoke cleared, there was only a cloud of shredded matter left, floating gently down like petals in a world that had caught its breath.
On the ground a massive hole was surrounded by a circular band of devastation, littered with dead bodies and pieces of bodies, and burning or flattened tents. Even the road was scattered with debris. There had been a dray, there, he remembered. With kegs. Gunpowder kegs, obviously.
It had only been minutes since he’d left. Ten at the most.
Perhaps Sorrel hasn’t escaped.
He sent the eagle a little lower, searching the scene with a raptor’s sharp vision. There were spot fires burning, and a scattering of unopened kegs. The dray had been overturned by the blast, not destroyed. If – when? – the fire spread, there would be more blasts…
He could hear screaming now. Shouting. Crackling of fire. He was directly over the encampment, still searching, when he caught a flare of witchery. No, wait. That wasn’t witchery; it was sakti.
But Ardhi wasn’t there, and the small pieces of feather Sorrel wore in her bambu locket had never glowed like this.
It had to be the kris, Ardhi’s kris, glowing because its power was in play, as bright as a beacon in the vision of a raptor. He curved the eagle around in a tight turn to t
ake another look, homing in on the glow at the edge of the road about thirty paces away from the bridge.
This time he saw her body. She was either dead, or unconscious, lying face-down, her arms bent forward on either side of her head. Her right hand clasped the kris. She was not far enough away from the fires, or from the unexploded powder kegs, to be safe. If she still lived.
The eagle screeched, and he saw her through its eyes. Her left side was drenched in blood, the florid ruby of Betany roses.
His heart turned over.
He wanted to ask the bird to land. His need to go to her was overwhelming, but he stopped that insanity before it took hold. Inside an eagle, what could he do to help her?
He turned and flew as fast as he could back to his body.
24
Revelations
A footman, after tapping on the door of the Regala’s retiring room and being bade enter, handed Regala Mathilda a note. “For Your Grace,” he murmured, and effaced himself from the room in a sidle that Lowmian servants had perfected over generations of servitude. Mathilda found it both ridiculous and oddly pleasing.
Sometimes the Lowmian court drove her to distraction with its exaggerations. It was surprisingly difficult to change anything, even when the presumption was that she had the power of life and death over the palace staff. Odd, that. She’d thought being the Regent would mean she could do exactly what she wanted.
She waited until the footman had gone before heaving a sigh, feeling certain that the note was from Chancellor Yan Grussblat requesting a meeting about her recent order to proceed with the execution of Merchant Uthen Kesleer. That upstart fellow deserved to hang for what he’d done to Regal Vilmar, but Grussblat had urged clemency, saying Kesleer’s wealth would fall into the wrong hands if he was dead.
Another decision to make, just when she’d been enjoying a moment of peace, so rare in her life now. There was never enough time to spend with her son, let alone just be quiet by herself. Always some affair of state begged for her attention, or an argument had to be won with her Council, or a decision made about fiscal matters, or a draft of a law to peruse. Always something.