Warlord

by Jennifer Fallon

  “Adham,” Tejay said in a low voice. “Be a pet, would you, and sidle up to Captain Almodavar and tell him if he keeps on coaching those boys from the sidelines, I’ll arrange to have his intestines relocated to the outside of his body as soon as we get to Byamor.”

  Adham looked at her askance and did as she asked without comment. She turned back to the fight and glared at Damin with an impatient frown. “You’ll be considering the most artistic way to arrange your internal organs on the ground next to your corpse too, young man,” she muttered to herself, “if you don’t put an end to this, shortly.”

  But just as Damin seemed about to abandon all common sense and do exactly what she’d advised him not to, she heard a ruckus to her right and turned in time to see the soldiers blocking the road from Zadenka Manor suddenly fall silent as they hastily stepped aside to make way for a trio of charging horses that ploughed through the circle of gathered men with little care for anybody’s safety.

  Tejay was stunned to realise two of the riders were Rorin and the scout Damin had sent with the sorcerer yesterday to speak to Narvell at Zadenka Manor. Astride the mare in the lead was a dishevelled young woman, her long dark hair streaming out behind her. In hot pursuit of the trio was a troop of Raiders led by a grey-haired, middle-aged man who wore the same look of fury Tejay had feared she might see on Damin’s face.

  The horses skidded to a halt in a shower of loose gravel, sending Damin and Narvell diving out of their way to avoid being barrelled over. With a desperate sob, the young woman flew from the saddle and into Narvell’s arms just as the other horsemen caught up with them.

  The fight clearly no longer Narvell’s concern, Damin hurriedly stepped back, watching this strange turn of events with a puzzled look. Narvell, on the other hand, obviously knew the girl. His brother forgotten, he put his arms around her and held her close briefly, and then pushed her behind him as the newcomers rode into the circle of troops, putting himself protectively between the desperate young woman and her pursuers.

  “Well done!” Tejay said with an approving nod as Rorin dismounted hurriedly beside her, pushing his horse clear.

  He turned to her in confusion. “My lady?”

  “Turns out you really are a sorcerer, aren’t you? A proper one, I mean, not one of those Greenharbour fools who buys his way into the Sorcerers’ Collective and likes to think he’s performed magic if he manages to melt snow over an open flame.”

  Rorin frowned, panting heavily from his ride, watching the other riders dismount, rather than paying Tejay much attention. “What do you mean, my lady?”

  She patted him on the shoulder. “I was hoping someone would break this up before it got out of hand. I wasn’t expecting magic, though. Impressive, lad. Not to mention quite original and totally unexpected. You’ve done very well.”

  Rorin glanced at her and shook his head as the man leading the troop of mounted Raiders jumped from his horse and advanced on Narvell threateningly, his hand on his sword hilt. “I’m not here to break anything up, my lady,” he warned. “If anything, my arrival is going to make things a whole lot worse.”

  “You mean this isn’t divine intervention? Because I tell you, Rorin, you couldn’t have picked a better moment to appear if you’d actually cast a spell to find the most appropriate time.”

  “Get your hands off my wife!” the older man bellowed at Narvell while Tejay and Rorin were talking. The girl cowered behind her protector, who was—rather inconveniently—unarmed.

  Tejay turned from Rorin and took in the scene with a glance. She sighed, shaking her head at the newcomers. “Maybe I was a bit hasty, thanking you for arriving at such an opportune time.”

  “There wasn’t much else I could do, my lady.” Rorin shrugged apologetically. “Under the circumstances.”

  Before Rorin could stop her, Tejay stepped forward, putting herself between Narvell and the young woman’s irate husband. “Is that any way to address a member of your ruling family?” she demanded, guessing this man wasn’t used to anybody standing up to him, particularly a woman.

  He halted in surprise and then roughly shoved Tejay aside. “Out of my way, woman! This is between me and that treacherous little Hawksword bastard.”

  Tejay stumbled backwards but thankfully Rorin caught her before she fell. The girl Narvell was shielding whimpered in fear as her husband moved closer. Fortunately, the troop accompanying the man remained mounted and made no move to intervene, acutely aware they were surrounded by several thousand troops who didn’t appear very sympathetic to their lord’s cause.

  But that was the least of her concerns. In a heartbeat the situation had changed and they were back in the tinderbox. The whole bizarre interruption had taken only a minute or two and Damin looked decidedly unhappy at the way this stranger was treating his brother and his friends.

  “Almodavar!”

  The captain had his sword out and tossed it to his prince, almost before Damin had finished speaking. The prince snatched the blade out of the air, took a step forward and pressed the point against the older man’s throat, preventing him moving any closer to Narvell or his terrified wife.

  “That ‘treacherous little Hawksword bastard’ is my brother,” he informed the man coldly. “The lady you’re pushing around is a very dear friend and the men you rode here in pursuit of are mine. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just run you through, right here and now.”

  “Who the hell are you?” the man asked disparagingly, glancing down at the blade Damin held to his throat as if it was nothing more than a minor irritation.

  “Damin Wolfblade,” he replied. “Who the hell are you?”

  The man hesitated. It probably wasn’t fear that gave him pause. Damin’s reputation was quite deliberately that of a foolish young man with little to recommend him and the news of the events in Krakandar and Damin’s attack on his uncle wasn’t likely to have reached much beyond the walls of the city yet. But even an angry provincial lord thought twice before making an enemy of the next High Prince.

  “I am Stefan Warhaft, the Baron of Zadenka,” the man replied, taking his hand from his sword hilt. “And I demand satisfaction!”

  “For what?” Damin asked. (Rather unnecessarily, Tejay thought; a blind man could see what was happening here.)

  Lord Warhaft drew himself up self-righteously and pointed at Narvell and the woman using the young man as a shield against her husband’s wrath.

  “For that!” he announced loudly. “I want satisfaction because your brother accepted my hospitality and then the ungrateful little bastard stole my wife!”

  CHAPTER 13

  It was after dark before Damin was able to make sense out of anything going on between Narvell, Lord Warhaft and his errant young wife, Kendra.

  With the challenge between the two brothers no longer an issue in light of these new developments, Damin had arranged for Tejay to watch over the young woman and tend her cuts and bruises. He then commandeered the village inn while he tried to sort everything out. Almodavar and Adham were taking care of both the Krakandar and Elasapine troops, but he’d kept Rorin close by. As a member of the Sorcerers’ Collective, he made an impeccable witness and Damin had a bad feeling he’d need an impartial point of view before this was done with.

  Listening to Lord Warhaft’s pompous recital of his woes, however, Damin began to wish he’d flattened his younger brother when he had the chance. If Stefan Warhaft was to be believed, Narvell certainly deserved it.

  The trouble started some months ago, according to Warhaft, when Charel Hawksword sent his grandson to Zadenka to keep him safe from the plague that was ravaging Byamor, as it was every other city in Hythria except Krakandar. Stefan was a distant cousin of the Hawksword family and more than happy to do his liege lord a favour by offering the heir to Elasapine sanctuary in his isolated manor house on the border of the two provinces until the danger was past. Narvell had arrived in Zadenka with as many troops as Charel dared spare from the city. He was a wily old warrior
, Charel Hawksword, Damin thought, obviously determined to protect more than his grandson. Once this crisis was past, the strongest Warlords would be those who still had some sort of army intact.

  Narvell and Kendra had known each other since they were fifteen when Kendra was sent to court by her parents, looking for a suitable husband. She’d spent a summer in Byamor before Stefan made an offer for her hand and the following winter, when she turned sixteen, she’d been married to the Baron of Zadenka, a man thirty years her senior, and brought here to Zadenka to live. She had borne him a daughter a bare nine months after the wedding and then a son two years later.

  Unconcerned, at first, about his wife renewing her acquaintanceship with the young heir to Elasapine, Lord Warhaft had seen little danger in their friendship. But it became clear, over time, that his wife and Lord Hawksword were sharing much more than old memories. The situation had come to a head, so Warhaft informed Damin, when Narvell left the manor two days ago with his troops to intercept his brother’s forces coming in from Krakandar. Damin had sent a letter to Charel Hawksword before they left, advising him of the situation with Fardohnya. Charel, in turn, had written to Narvell and told him to take this opportunity to publicly establish who was going to be calling the shots in Elasapine, once the old man was dead.

  It was that letter which had brought Narvell to this place, and his absence that gave Stefan Warhaft the opportunity to beat the truth out of his errant wife. He’d locked her up two days ago, he told Damin, obviously expecting sympathy for his plight, after chastising her severely for her infidelity with a horsewhip.

  Kendra, however, wasn’t nearly as chastened as Stefan believed. The moment his back was turned, she’d broken a window, climbed a trellis two storeys down to the ground, stolen a horse from her husband’s stables and fled the manor, hoping she’d find Narvell before her husband found her.

  Unfortunately for Kendra, her husband got to her first. He’d dragged her back to the manor in the early hours of this morning, ready to do his worst, only to find he had a visitor from the Sorcerers’ Collective waiting for him, looking for Narvell Hawksword. Figuring she had nothing left to lose, the young woman had thrown herself on Rorin Mariner’s mercy and begged him to protect her.

  At this point, their stories diverged. If Warhaft was to be believed, Rorin began throwing his weight around like he owned the place, demanded Kendra be turned over to him and rode out of Zadenka Manor with Kendra at his side, gloating over his prize. Warhaft had naturally followed them, with the perfectly understandable desire to retrieve his wife.

  According to Rorin, he’d done nothing of the kind. He claimed he’d made a point of not getting involved in the Warhafts’ domestic dispute. It was only when Warhaft struck Kendra with a horsewhip in his presence that he’d decided to intervene. His idea of intervention was to get the poor woman out of the manor until her husband calmed down. Warhaft had given chase, so Rorin claimed, which had resulted in their rather dramatic arrival at the village and the end to any argument Damin and Narvell might be having over who was subordinate to whom.

  Given the manner of their arrival, Damin was inclined to believe Rorin’s version of events over Stefan Warhaft’s.

  “So you see, your highness,” Lord Warhaft declared as he finished his version of the tale, “your brother has acted most shamelessly in this matter. And that Sorcerers’ Collective lackey you sent to my house had no right to steal my wife from me.”

  “Sounds to me like she was running away, Lord Warhaft, not being stolen from you.”

  “A situation that would never have arisen, but for your brother’s reprehensible behaviour! I demand my honour be restored!”

  Damin shook his head. This fool had picked the wrong time to proudly announce he’d beaten his wife into submission with a horsewhip and expect any sympathy from Damin Wolfblade.

  “And how do you propose to have your honour restored, my lord?” Damin enquired, his voice flat.

  Warhaft didn’t know him well enough to recognise the danger signs, but Rorin certainly did. “Perhaps we can discuss that later,” the young sorcerer suggested, looking pointedly at Damin. “After you’ve spoken to Lord Hawksword, your highness?”

  I must have really frightened Rorin in Krakandar, Damin thought, as he met his friend’s eye. He looks like he’s afraid I’m going to run Warhaft through.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Damin agreed, more to reassure Rorin he wasn’t on the verge of uncontrollable rage than any desire to see justice done.

  “I demand satisfaction!” Warhaft called after him.

  Damin slammed the door, cutting off the irate voice, without bothering to answer.

  Narvell was in a room down the dingy hall, watching over Kendra while Tejay tended her wounds. He opened the roughly finished door when Damin knocked and slipped outside into the hall, leaving the women alone.

  “How is she?” Damin asked, catching only a candlelit glimpse of the two women as Narvell pulled the door shut behind him.

  Narvell’s voice was choked with barely contained fury. “He horsewhipped her, Damin.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m going to kill him,” Narvell announced, turning toward the taproom where Rorin waited with Stefan Warhaft.

  Damin blocked his way. “No, you’re not.”

  “You’re defending him?”

  “Of course not.”

  Narvell seemed unconvinced. “Do you have any idea how much damage a man can do to a defenceless woman with a horsewhip?”

  “More than you realise,” Damin assured him bleakly. “Let’s go outside. I need some fresh air.”

  Reluctantly, Narvell agreed and followed Damin down the gloomy hall. They stepped out into a crisp night, the stars lighting the small yard at the back of the inn with faint, pearly light.

  “Is what Warhaft told me true?” Damin asked, as Narvell took a seat on an upturned keg by the woodshed.

  “I don’t know,” Narvell shrugged. “What’s he telling you?”

  “That you came here to wait out the plague and decided to amuse yourself with his wife.”

  Narvell laughed sourly. “Well, I suppose he would see it like that.”

  “This is serious, Narvell.”

  “That’s an odd thing for you to say,” his brother remarked, looking at him curiously. “What happened to the man who refused to take anything seriously?”

  “I buried him in Krakandar,” Damin replied grimly. “Alongside Leila.”

  Narvell’s expression darkened. “Tejay told me what happened. I can’t believe Leila’s dead. Or that you didn’t kill Mahkas.”

  “It doesn’t suit me for him to die right now,” Damin informed his brother. “It doesn’t suit me for Warhaft to die, either.”

  “It’d suit me just fine.”

  Damin sighed. “If you had to fall in love, Narvell, couldn’t you have found somebody less dangerous than another man’s wife?”

  “When I fell in love with Kendra, she wasn’t another man’s wife, Damin. She wasn’t anybody’s wife.”

  “Warhaft said something about you knowing her before they married.”

  The young man’s eyes glazed over in remembrance. “She came to Byamor when I was fifteen. The first time I saw her, I couldn’t breathe.”

  Having never been in love, Damin wasn’t all that sympathetic, given the trouble his brother’s love affair was likely to cause at a time when they could least afford the distraction. “I suppose she feels the same way?”

  “We’re soul mates, Damin. Two sides of the same coin.”

  And a pair of hopeless romantics, he amended silently. “Why didn’t you say something to Charel? If Kendra was sent to Byamor to find a husband, surely the Warlord’s heir would have been good enough for her parents?”

  “I did talk to my grandfather,” Narvell replied. “I begged him to let me marry her. He laughed at me. He said I was only a child so I couldn’t possibly know what it meant to be in love. A month later he gave permission for Warh
aft to marry Kendra and she was shipped off to Zadenka. I never even got a chance to say goodbye.”

  “And seven years later Charel just happens to send you here to wait out the plague?”

  Narvell smiled faintly. “Actually, he wanted to send me to Krakandar. I convinced him I needed to be closer. Zadenka was as far as I could get from the plague in Byamor and still be in Elasapine Province.”

  “Well, that turned out to be a capital idea, didn’t it?”

  “You’d have done exactly the same thing in my place, Damin.”

  Damin found himself losing patience with his younger brother. “I’d never be stupid enough to sleep with another man’s wife, Narvell. They’re not worth the trouble.”

  His brother looked unimpressed by Damin’s naive declaration. “You say that now. But you’ll meet a woman someday, Damin, who’ll steal your breath away. And you won’t care who she is or who she belongs to. Then you won’t be nearly so damned self-righteous.”

  “I’m not being self-righteous. I’m being practical.” He smiled sourly. “Anyway, it’s not like I’m going to have a choice. Any woman I marry is going to have to get past Marla first, and meet her exacting standards of what constitutes a suitable consort for a High Prince. As that narrows the field down to nobody who actually exists, I figure I’m not going to have to worry about it for a long time yet.”

  Narvell grimaced sympathetically. “You may have a point, brother.”

  Damin sighed, wishing he had some idea of how to handle this mess. “What am I supposed to do about this woman of yours?”

  “She’s not going back to him, Damin. I won’t allow it.”

  “It’s not your decision.”

  “I’ve made it mine, nonetheless. Anyway, I can’t believe you’d let that savage bastard near her again, given what you did to Mahkas after he whipped Leila.”

  “I loved Leila like a sister, Narvell,” he pointed out. “I don’t know this Kendra of yours enough to care.”

  “Then do it for me.”

  “Do what, exactly?”