“And what estimates do you have of their current numbers?”
“There are about five thousand troops in Cabradell from Krakandar and Elasapine, your majesty,” the lad told him. “Because of the plague, Sunrise will be hard-pressed to match that number when they’re finally mustered.”
“Less than ten thousand men?” Hablet exclaimed. “Why, that’s excellent news!”
“What of the other provinces?” Regis asked, not quite so enchanted with the report. “Have they not sent troops as well?”
“Our informant claimed Pentamor and Greenharbour were sending troops and Dregian Province is supposed to be sending another three thousand men, but they wouldn’t know for certain until the High Prince arrived in Cabradell. That’s what Brak was waiting around for.”
“The High Prince?” Adrina echoed curiously. “Surely he’s not in command of the Hythrun defences?”
“That’s what Lord Warhaft told us, your highness.”
“Who is Lord Warhaft?” Regis asked.
“He’s an officer in Lord Hawksword’s Elasapine contingent, sire,” the young spy answered.
“You actually spoke to a Hythrun officer?” Regis said doubtfully. “Is that where your information comes from?”
The lad nodded. “Brak found him crying into his beer in a tavern just near the temple of Zegarnald in Cabradell. He was very upset, my lord. His wife had been taken from him by Lord Hawksword and then when he appealed to Lord Narvell’s brother, the High Prince’s heir, he took a fancy to her too, and now she’s part of his entourage. The man had no great love of the Wolfblades, that’s for certain, and with just cause once you’d heard his tale. He was happy to tell us what he knew.”
“So the nephews are cut from the same cloth as the uncle?” Adrina remarked sourly, almost as keen as her father to see the end of the Hythrun royal line, although for quite different reasons—Hablet fervently hoped—than his own. “I almost feel sorry for the Hythrun.”
“Aye,” Ollie agreed. “You should hear the stories we heard about the High Prince’s heir, your highness. Tales of orgies with his Denikan court’esa. How he makes his officers wait on his pleasure, sometimes for hours at a time. And then—”
“But you say Lernen Wolfblade is on his way to lead their troops against us?” Hablet cut in, impatient with Adrina’s unhealthy interest in the lad’s gossip about the decadent goings-on in the Hythrun court. “Are you certain?”
“Quite certain, your majesty,” the boy confirmed. “Nobody was very happy about it, either.”
Hablet glanced at Axelle Regis. “I would have thought he’d send someone like Rogan Bearbow, at the very least. Or Charel Hawksword, perhaps?”
“He had a stroke.”
Both the king and the general turned to look at Adrina.
“Charel Hawksword,” she explained. “He had a stroke. About three years ago. He’s paralysed down one side of his body. He can barely sit a horse, let alone lead troops into battle.”
This is why she’s dangerous, Hablet thought. She makes it her business to know these things.
“Perhaps the plague took out more key men than we’ve heard about yet,” Axelle suggested. “I heard Barnardo Eaglespike of Dregian Province was taken in the early days of the epidemic, but who’s to say how many more Warlords Hythria has lost that we’ve yet to hear about?”
“Are you suggesting Lernen’s leading his troops because there’s nobody else?” Hablet laughed. “Oh … that’s just too precious for words!”
Adrina looked hopefully at her father. “Can I be High Princess of Hythria after it’s been conquered, Daddy?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he told her, patting her hand affectionately. “I’d never let you get even a smell of that much power, my sweet. You know that.”
“I’d be very loyal, Daddy,” she promised.
“Yes, I’m sure you would, petal,” he said, privately alarmed at the thought that she actually meant it. “And the Harshini are going to magically reappear tomorrow, too, I suppose?”
Adrina laughed dismissively, but Hablet wasn’t convinced. It would be just like his daughter to want the Hythrun throne. For that reason—among many others—he’d gone to great lengths to keep Adrina in the dark about his problem with the distant Wolfblade cousins being in line for the Fardohnyan throne if he failed to get an heir. Adrina was nobody’s fool and it wouldn’t take her long to realise even the notoriously patriarchal Fardohnyans might be persuaded that the unthinkable notion of a Fardohnyan queen was preferable to the unconscionable notion of a Hythrun king.
Yet another reason to ensure her relationship with Regis never progresses any further than flirting across the dinner table.
“Well, I say we’ve waited around long enough,” he declared, anxious to divert his daughter’s alarming train of thought from the idea that she was fit to rule anything. “What say we move these boys out, Regis? By the sound of it, Lernen is waiting for us. Time to show the old pervert who the gods truly favour, eh?”
Lord Regis rose to his feet and bowed. “As you wish, your majesty. I will issue the appropriate orders tonight and we can begin moving the troops through the Widowmaker immediately.”
The King of Fardohnya nodded his approval and with those few words the invasion of Hythria had begun.
PART THREE
WAR GAMES
CHAPTER 40
As dawn crept across the Cabradell Valley, Damin climbed out of his bed. He had dreamed again of his meeting with the God of War, and it had unsettled him. Careful not to disturb Lyrian, he padded barefoot to the table by the window to study the game in progress, hoping for a distraction. He’d still told nobody of his meeting, more than a little afraid of the reaction if he announced he’d started seeing the gods. Rorin may have been sympathetic, but Damin wasn’t sure about how others might view his revelation. He could risk no hint of anything that might indicate he was as crazy as his uncle. But he desperately wished Wrayan was here. He’d seen the gods. He’d spoken to them.
He’d know if Damin’s vision was real or just wishful thinking.
Damin fixed his attention on the ceramic bowls on the table, pushed all thoughts of gods from his mind. By the time Lernen Wolfblade had arrived in Cabradell several days ago, Damin had lost Medalon, Karien and a good portion of Fardohnya to Prince Lunar Shadow Kraig of the House of the Rising Moon, all because of his stupid seed game and the fact that Damin was becoming obsessed by it.
Tejay’s accusation that he was intolerably competitive was proving truer than he’d imagined. Until now, Damin never fully appreciated how much he hated losing, compounded by the fact that for the first time in his life, he was confronted by something he couldn’t master easily. Kraig’s smug condescension every time he won wasn’t helping much either. The seed game, so simple in theory and so complex in its execution, was proving a challenge the young prince was obsessively determined to conquer.
“Come back to bed,” Lyrian complained, pulling up the covers to compensate for being robbed of the warmth of Damin’s body.
“Do you know how to play this damn game?” he asked, without looking up from the table.
“Every child in Denika learns it,” she told him sleepily. When she got no further response from him, the Denikan warrior turned on her side, resting her head on her hand as she watched the young prince. “But I’m not very good at it. I don’t have the patience to become a master. Not like Kraig.”
Damin frowned at the seed bowls before he turned to look at her with a thin smile. “Ah, yes … his royal smugness, Prince Lunar Shadow Kraig. I’d like to get him down in the training yards for an hour or so. I may not be able to take him in this game but I could beat him with a quarterstaff. In fact, I think I’d rather enjoy beating him with a quarterstaff.”
“Kraig is a master of many weapons,” Lyrian informed him confidently. “In my country he is thought of most highly as a warrior.”
“Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“So
why don’t you?”
“Why don’t I what?”
“Why don’t you and Kraig go down to the training yards together? He could teach you a great deal.”
Damin smiled and reached for his shirt. It was officially spring, but the air was crisp so close to dawn. “For one thing, Lyrian, despite the insufferably high opinion you and Barlaina have of your prince—and for that matter the insufferably high opinion he has of himself—I think I can manage to find my way around a quarterstaff without any help from his royal highness, the Crown Prince of Superiority. And secondly, Kraig is posing as a slave. If I was caught arming him, even in a training yard, every slave owner in Hythria would be howling for my blood.”
Lyrian frowned. “If you are afraid of your slaves, Damin Wolfblade, perhaps you shouldn’t keep them.”
“I’m not afraid of them.” He pulled the shirt over his head and walked back to the bed, where he sat down to pull on his trousers.
“You’re afraid to arm them,” she accused.
“That’s not fear, that’s pragmatism.”
“It is fear,” she corrected. “Your slaves outnumber you in this country … what … three or four to one? If they staged an armed uprising, you would be annihilated.”
“Which is why any slave owner with half a brain treats his slaves as if they’re members of his own family,” Damin informed her. “I haven’t noticed you complaining about the harsh treatment you’re suffering as one of my chattels.”
“People don’t sell off members of their own families like cattle,” she pointed out. “Your argument is flawed.”
“I suggest you speak to Lady Lionsclaw. Or Kendra Warhaft. Ask them if they think we don’t sell members of our own families off like cattle. Barlaina can be rather vocal on the issue, too. I believe your friend thinks we’re all barbarians with no morals and only barely tolerable table manners.”
Lyrian smiled at the mention of Barlaina. “My companion is not as tolerant of foreigners as I am.”
“No, really?”
The first night Barlaina had come to his room—on Kraig’s orders and clearly under protest—she had presented herself just as Damin was getting ready for bed. Standing at the foot of his bed, her hands on her hips, Barlaina had calmly informed the heir to the Hythrun throne that if he attempted to lay so much as a finger on her, she would break every bone in his hands, followed by his arms, followed by his collarbone, and so on, until he either got the message or was incapable of acting on his desires. She had then climbed into bed, pulled the covers up under her chin, turned over and promptly gone to sleep.
Not surprisingly, Damin didn’t rest much when Barlaina was in his bed.
Lyrian, on the other hand, was making the most of this rare opportunity to experience Hythria like a Hythrun, even if it was as a court’esa. They’d had a number of interesting discussions in the middle of the night about the differences between their cultures. The Hythrun and Fardohnyan custom of keeping court’esa was a particular bone of contention. The Denikans considered the practice both barbaric and immoral, and nothing Damin said was likely to convince them otherwise. In their view, one honoured the Goddess of Love by treating her favours as precious gifts, unlike the Hythrun and the Fardohnyans who believed one couldn’t honour Kalianah in the manner she deserved unless one was trained from the age of sixteen to use what the goddess had given them to the best of their ability.
Barlaina would have none of it. The much more openminded Lyrian, however, insisted she was selflessly learning what she could of Hythrun customs—for purely diplomatic reasons—and was therefore required to suffer the full indignity of her position, a role she undertook at every opportunity with rather more enthusiasm than one might have expected from a woman who professed abhorrence of the whole concept of keeping sex slaves.
There was little Damin could do under the circumstances, he consoled himself, but show Lyrian what she seemed determined to learn—for the same purely diplomatic reasons, of course, that she used to justify her actions. He was very careful of her feelings, however, partly because he liked her, and partly because he had a sneaking suspicion Barlaina was planning to crush his testicles with her bare hands if he upset her friend even a little.
There was a fine line, Damin had discovered, between diplomacy and disaster.
Fortunately, he was saved from having to defend the structure of Hythrun society further by the door opening. Expecting a slave come to see if he wanted breakfast brought to his room this morning, Damin was surprised to find Tejay standing in the door.
“You’re up already,” she noted with relief.
“What’s wrong?” There was no reason for Tejay to be here at this hour for anything other than bad news.
“Adham’s back from Highcastle,” she informed him grimly. “And you’d better come quickly, Damin, because there’s a good chance he’s dying.”
“A damn tavern brawl!” Adham called out to Damin painfully when the wounded young man spied his stepbrother hurrying across the hall to greet him. He was laid out on the cushions surrounding the low table in Tejay’s main reception hall, looking very pale and rather peeved by the whole situation. “Can you believe it? The bastard pulled a knife on me and I didn’t even see it until he was slicing my guts open with the wretched thing.”
Damin squatted down beside Adham, whose face was sheened with sweat. Across his abdomen was a bloody bandage that Tejay’s physician was gingerly trying to peel away from the wound.
“When did it happen?”
“Last night. In Staunton.”
“Why did you ride all the way back to Cabradell?” Damin asked, puzzled by Adham’s risky journey in such a perilous condition. “Staunton’s only twenty miles from here. Why didn’t you send word? I would have come to you.”
“That’s not what I heard,” Adham told him, wincing. “And I thought about staying in the village, but the physic there was drunker than I was, so I figured I was better off coming back here.” He jerked in pain and grabbed Tejay’s physician by his shirt, pulling the man to him with a snarl. “Do you mind?” he gasped. “That’s my guts you’re trying to spill all over the carpet.”
“Leave him alone, Adham,” Tejay scolded. “He’s only trying to help.”
“Then tell him to do it a little less enthusiastically.” Ignoring the hapless physician, Adham turned back to Damin, obviously in agony. “From what I hear, brother, you’ve precious little time for anyone besides yourself these days.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“The rumours are everywhere,” Adham said. “I got this hole in my gut defending you from them. You should have heard what this stupid bastard was claiming you were up to! I couldn’t stand by and let it go unchallenged. Mind you, don’t tell Almodavar I got caught out by a drunk with a skinning knife, will you? He’d never let me live it down.”
“You didn’t have to defend me, Adham.”
“I shouldn’t have had to … OW!” he yelped, and the last of the bandages were lifted from his wound, which seemed to be just above his navel. From what Damin could see of it, the cut looked clean, but he understood now why Tejay feared Adham may be dying. Even a small nick in his intestines could easily turn septic and such a wound was invariably fatal. “I’m warning you!” he growled at the physician. “Do that again, and I’ll disembowel you, little man.”
The old slave rose to his feet and looked to his mistress helplessly, wiping his hands on a towel. “The wound seems fairly straightforward, my lady, but I cannot do anything for him here. And I certainly could do with some cooperation from the patient if I’m to have any hope of treating him.”
Tejay nodded. “We’ll move him to one of the guest rooms,” she agreed. “As for you,” she added, looking down at the young trader, “I know you’re in pain, Adham, but Caranth Roe is the best physician in Cabradell and as I have no intention of allowing you to die under my roof, if you don’t start letting him do his job I’ll knock you unconscious myself, so he can work uninterrup
ted.”
Without waiting for Adham to respond, she turned away, issuing orders to her slaves to make the arrangements to have the spice trader moved.
“You’d think she was the damned Warlord around here,” Adham complained in a low voice to Damin. “She ought to be, the way she bosses everyone around.”
He smiled sympathetically. “She means well.”
“I don’t suppose Rorin’s back from Winternest?” his stepbrother asked hopefully. “I could do with a bit of magical healing, right about now. I don’t care what Tejay says about her physician. The man’s a butcher.”
“Haven’t heard from Rory or Terin, I’m afraid.” Then he added, “Uncle Lernen’s here though. He arrived a few days ago. And he’s going to lead us to victory against the Fardohnyans.”
“I noticed.” Adham groaned as another wave of pain washed over him. “At least I’m assuming the bright red pavilion roughly about the size of the Greenharbour palace I saw from the road on the way in was his personal accommodation.”
“Yes, that’s Lemen’s accommodation,” Damin sighed.
“In keeping with his well-known preference for subtle austerity, I see.” Adham grimaced. He knew Lemen almost as well as Damin did. “I wish I was the bearer of better news then.”
Before Damin could ask about Adham’s news, Tejay returned with two more slaves carrying a stretcher. “There he is, lads,” she told the stretcher-bearers. “Be firm but gentle with him. And don’t listen to a single word he says. Or to any of his empty threats. This is my palace and regardless of what Master Tirstone claims, I won’t allow anybody to be beheaded on his whim.”
“That’s hardly fair, my lady!” Adham objected. “I’m seriously injured!”
“I know you are,” Tejay agreed unsympathetically. “But you’re also bleeding all over my good cushions.”
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