In the Company of the Dead (The Sundered Oath Book 1)

by Ballintyne, Ciara

  His worst fear, an unspoken and foolish fear, was that an army raised that dust cloud. And yet why should there be an army here? Though technically part of the Borders, Caisteal Aingeal was some thirty leagues from the official boundary between kingdoms, and miles more to the nearest of the fortified keeps. This remote castle, built around a small shrine of Ahura, the goddess of death, truth and justice, contained nothing of value or interest.

  Nothing except me.

  Prince Drault would not use an army though, would he? Not inside his own father’s kingdom? He could never hope to get away with such audacity.

  Lyram shook himself, as though to rid himself of surprise. “Report, please, Maddok.”

  He surveyed the castle as he listened to the report, his eyes cataloguing fortifications. The knot tightened in his stomach with each passing word. Maddok paused intermittently to gasp through the pain. He was dying, and most likely more would die in days to come, men Lyram had known all his life. But Maddok was young, so very young, and though Lyram had lost men before, he hated it each and every time.

  “Two thousand men?” Despite his best efforts, disbelief tinged Lyram’s words as Maddok’s report rolled to a close. A tiny castle, Caisteal Aingeal’s full strength was a barracks of a mere hundred soldiers. Currently, his own guard bolstered the permanent contingent to twice that. After the king dismissed him, they’d been loyal enough to follow him into exile, far from home and court, but had their loyalty brought them only to certain death? It seemed so, in the face of such overwhelming odds.

  Drault is behind this. He insisted I be exiled, and he’s behind this, too—somehow.

  He shunted the memory aside and pulled a half-empty whisky flask from his belt, but before he took a draught, Everard plucked it from his grasp.

  “Not where the men can see.” His aide stuffed the bottle in his sporran.

  “Near enough two thousand.” Maddok coughed, and bright, red blood flecked his lips. “Near as I could count. Sir... they fly the gyrfalcon of Velena.”

  A murmur ran through the watching soldiers, and Galdron actually spit on the cobbles. “Velenese bastards,” the captain muttered through his ginger beard.

  The interminable border wars between Ahlleyn and Velena had only recently come to a close, and some of these men had been with Lyram at the Siege of Invergahr, which started the uneasy peace. A great many more had died there.

  “An invasion?” If he could snatch the words back, he would. Persuading Everard and Galdron this was directed at Lyram personally would be hard enough without offering up the convenient explanation of a Velenese invasion. Drault must be behind this army, somehow, someway, even though it made no sense. But an invasion made no sense either—there were more lucrative targets closer to the border than Caisteal Aingeal.

  Maddok’s breathing grew more laboured, and fresh blood stained his lips.

  Lyram clenched his jaw so hard his teeth hurt. Not the first, and not the last. Hold it together, man.

  “Right flags,” the scout murmured, so softly that Lyram had to lean closer, his ear to Maddok’s lips. “But they looked to me like... like Gallowglaighs.” He drew in a deep, rattling breath.

  “Anyone could have hired the Gallowglaighs,” Everard said behind him.

  “Gallowglaighs are led by Sayella,” Galdron replied. “She could be doing it for patriotism or it could be her daddy paying her men’s wages. That brings it back to Velena.”

  “The earl never acknowledged her,” Everard said. “And she hates him for it.”

  Galdron grunted. “You have a point. I heard she wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire.”

  “I heard she told him so. Loudly.”

  Lyram waved their half-bantering debate to silence, waiting, but Maddok didn’t speak again. When he drew back, the scout’s eyes were fixed and staring.

  He snatched the waterskin from Everard and flung it across the courtyard, scattering the soldiers, and then dropped his face into his hands. No tears pricked his eyes—after all those he’d shed for Zaheva, it sometimes seemed he had no tears left to cry. A waste, a god-damned waste: Zaheva, and Maddok, and every other life lost in the Border Wars. And how many more to come? Ahura would drink her fill here long before the crows came. Worried faces peered at him over shoulders as men scurried for their posts.

  Across the courtyard, two women shrouded in loose black robes emerged from the well room, which also housed the stairwell to the catacombs, and crossed the cobbles. They knelt beside the body and, in unison, made the sign of the goddess, touching their brow, lips and breasts, to signify the mind, the breath and the heart of the departed, all of which eased in death. Heads bent, they began the ritual prayers of passing.

  One of them, her face lost in the shadows of her deep cowl, glanced at Lyram, and he shivered as the chill gaze of death brushed against him.

  She touched her hand to brow, lips and heart again.

  “An ill omen,” Everard murmured, staring at the priestesses of death. Stork tall and scrupulously neat, he stood out in his formal kilt and plaid. “For the start of a siege, a worse one is hardly possible, unless we find a company of Ahura’s valkyr or the Battle Priestess herself arrayed with the enemy.”

  “Don’t joke.” Lyram rounded on him, his voice rough. “Don’t ever joke about that.”

  When the warriors of Ahura picked sides, the choice endorsed one and condemned the other.

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

  “If the Velenese have broken the treaty,” Galdron said, in an obvious attempt to redirect the conversation, “we’re not prepared, especially not if they strike here first. We’re not equipped to stave off a full assault, but once they neutralise us it’s a clear path to the inner kingdom.”

  “Why would Velena invade right now, in the middle of the marriage negotiations?” Lyram stared off into the distance. He only half-listened for the answer to his question, already absorbed in siege preparations. Ten to one odds, and there was so much to do. He needed to check the food stores, the water casks, the inner well, the armoury, the oil supplies... too many things to list. He’d have no chance to recall the cattle herds wintering in the highlands. His eyes lit on the chickens scratching outside the kitchen, near the small garden. They had eggs, and fresh meat, though not much of either. There was more salted and dried meat in the stores.

  A small bevy of children kicked a ball near the kitchen door. Did he have time to get them out? What about the women? A castle under siege was no place for them, and the fewer mouths to feed the better, but where would they go? So many problems.

  Galdron and Everard exchanged glances, the latter chewing his lip. Though both were lifelong bachelors, their resemblance ended there. Galdron was bluff-faced, red-bearded and balding, and wore lamellar armour over mail, while Everard never had a single greying hair out of place and wore his formal court dress like a uniform. As always, the braid marking his rank as Lyram’s aide-de-camp was pinned to his shoulder. Galdron shrugged.

  Lyram nodded with satisfaction. “Exactly. This isn’t an invasion. This is political.”

  “Half a day doesn’t give us much time to prepare.” Galdron spoke in a faultlessly deferent and almost too reasonable tone, adopting the attitude of a man talking to a mad king likely to order his head chopped off. He restlessly passed his helm from one ham fist to the other. “All we can hope is to hold out here long enough for reinforcements. Not in time for most of us, maybe, but we can buy time for the king to muster a defence. You’ll need to send word to the king, warn him of the invasion.”

  “It’s not an invasion!” Lyram’s shout rang off the walls of the triangular courtyard, echoing slightly before fading away.

  A stir ran along the walls as the men and women manning the battlements glanced towards them and away.

  Everard’s lips thinned and his expression grew more pinched, but Galdron met Lyram’s gaze.

  “My lord.” He said the words firmly, emphasising the title Lyram detested. “Whether
this is an invasion or not is moot. You must send word to the king. I will find volunteers willing to risk the ride. You should compose a message.” He began to turn away, then stopped. “And shave.”

  Seething, Lyram spun on his heel. Why hadn’t he said something to Galdron? He should have reprimanded him, not allowed him to... what? Scold him? Dragon balls, but Everard was right to take away his whisky. No matter how he fell apart on the inside, he needed to hold himself together before his soldiers, now more than ever. And he couldn’t dress Galdron down without drawing attention to his sorry state.

  He pressed his fingers to his temples as he crossed the courtyard. How much sleep did he get last night? Midnight had come and gone before the whisky dulled the pain and oblivion took him.

  Not enough, that’s for sure. Not enough to plan a war.

  He entered the well room and turned left, climbing the winding stairs to the first floor and his suite. The brands that lined the walls were not yet lit, leaving the stairwell in dim shadows and hiding the shimmer of the pink limestone walls. The air here was cool, dank with moisture after the recent melting of the snow. His boot steps rang echoes off the distant stones.

  With the castellan and his family occupying the more lavish suites in the east wall, Lyram had claimed the old lord’s rooms overlooking the gate. Displacing the resident family just because he’d fallen into disfavour at court would have been poor form. He passed the carved door to the family’s residence, took the two steps up to his own quarters, and shouldered through the heavy oaken door into his untidy sitting room.

  He didn’t allow the servants in here. Everard tidied as much as he could, and that was all. In the near corner, his mail shirt and his moulded cuir bouilli plate armour rested on a stand. Stacks of papers swallowed the surface of a huge blackwood desk positioned to his right beneath the narrow arrowslit looking out towards the ruined outer wall. Straight ahead, through a wide, irregular archway, the covers trailed off the edge of a massive four-poster bed. He spent his nights sleeping inside the curved walls of the gate tower itself.

  He crossed the room, boot heels echoing on the floorboards, to the washstand just inside the archway. His razor blade sat next to a silvered glass and pitcher of water. He dipped a finger into the water and shivered at the icy chill. Winter was barely past, and snow probably still persisted in the mountains, with every chance yet of a spring blizzard. The fire had burned low on the hearth and needed stoking to warm the room.

  How many days since he’d last shaved? He didn’t recall. He picked up his razor and the mirror and examined his jaw. His chin and cheeks were covered in coarse reddish-blond stubble and his hair hung raggedly about his face, as if he’d hacked it off with a knife. When did I do that? No recollection even stirred. Must have been drunk out of his mind.

  His bloodshot blue eyes stared back at him, mocking. He dropped the razor, letting it clatter into the washbasin, placed the mirror down with more care, and turned back towards the sitting room.

  But above the desk, as mocking as his reflection, hung the portrait of his younger self, clean-shaven and square-jawed, with dark-red hair pulled back in a proper queue, staring imperiously with clear blue eyes out of the canvas. His shoulders were set and his plaid flung back to reveal the dragon-hilted clan sword still on his hip. That, at least, remained the same.

  The solitary portrait was years old now. A more recent painting hung in the capital. That one included Zaheva.

  He dropped into the chair at the desk and buried his face in his hands, as if hiding from the memories, or the portrait. Without raising his head, he groped for the desk drawer, opened it, and found the whisky bottle. As he lifted it to his lips, the fumes burning in his nostrils, the door opened.

  Everard paused with one hand on the door handle. His expression didn’t change, but disappointment and reproof sharpened his gaze.

  Lyram placed the bottle back on the desk with a muffled thud and wiped his chin with the back of his hand. Stubble scratched accusingly against the leather of his glove.

  His aide dragged another chair across the bare floor to the desk, wood squealing on floorboards, and dropped into the seat. His wireframe glasses slipped down his nose, and he pushed them back up over grey eyes. Reaching out, he placed the flask he’d confiscated in the courtyard back on the desk. “The castellan heard the news.”

  Lyram shrugged. “I expect he did.”

  “I believe you were writing missives for the king, sir?” Everard’s tone, as always, was formal and inflectionless, the recrimination in his voice too subtle for detection by anyone who didn’t know him well. With crisp movements, he pulled a sheet of paper free of its stack and placed it on the desk. He unstopped an ink well with one hand, removed the whisky bottle with the other, and positioned the ink next to Lyram’s elbow. “Galdron is picking out volunteers, fast riders all, to carry word, sir.”

  Lyram took the bottle back from Everard and dropped it into the drawer, where the glass rattled around before coming to a stop. He stared at the blank paper with unseeing eyes, aware of the flask still sitting alongside the inkwell. “What difference will it make? Drault will speak against sending aid to us.”

  “Fortunately the antipathy between yourself and his highness matters not a whit in this instance, sir. Prince Drault has no say in military matters, least of all when an unknown army is at large within our borders.”

  “No, but Traeburhn does, and he’s Drault’s dog. He’ll fake an investigation, arrange false reports of no unrest, and no aid will come.”

  Everard’s hand darted out, faster than Lyram thought him capable, and slapped him. Lyram jerked back in his chair, knocking the inkwell over.

  “What the—? Everard! How dare you!” The blow had stung more than hurt.

  His aide righted the ink bottle and mopped at the spilled ink with a cloth usually used to clean armour. “I would not strike my lord, but a foolish boy who is sulking and drowning his sorrows in a whisky bottle as an army marches to kill us all? Our lives depend on you, and you, my lord, are only in love with death.”

  The exaggerated sarcasm was impossible to miss. Lyram rubbed his cheek and scowled. “You make it sound like I am a drunkard.”

  “You weren’t sent out here for exemplary service, sir.”

  “No, I was sent out here because someone murdered my wife, and because Drault wants me dead!”

  Everard folded his hands neatly in his lap, managing to look prim. The small bald spot in the crown of his head gleamed in the sun coming through the arrowslit. “You were sent out here because you foolishly punched a prince in the nose and thought you could get away with it, if I may say so, sir.”

  No, you may not say so. But an aide had more leeway than any other, and Everard spoke only the truth. It still warmed him, remembering the shock spreading across Drault’s face as bright blood bloomed against his skin; the satisfying pain in his hand; the way Drault tumbled to the ground. He’d broken a knuckle on the prince’s head, but Drault’s nose was no longer as straight as it used to be, nor was his face as pretty as he liked.

  “You didn’t hear what he said.” That came out sulky, and Lyram gritted his teeth.

  “Nobody heard what he said, sir, except you. And while I would never doubt my lord’s word, I must observe, sir, that any such accusation would carry more weight coming from the sober son of a duke than from the whisky-soaked commander of a minor castle.” Everard’s gaze darted towards the portrait.

  Lyram drew a deep breath. Drault’s words that day still seared him, had burned deep into his memory: Where is your whore of a wife today? At home entertaining your vassals?

  Dead. She was already dead and cold when the prince spoke his hateful words, lying abandoned in the snow with an arrow in her back and her throat slit. She’d died alone.

  Lyram curled his fingers into fists until his nails dug into his palms, then let his fingers spring open. “I’ll dictate. You write. Three copies. To be handed to the king, and the king alone.”


  The missive was straight-forward, a bald recounting of matters as they stood: a force of either Velenese troops or the Gallowglaigh mercenary company marching under Velenese colours.

  Hired mercenaries would be exactly Drault’s style. They’d make it impossible to trace the gold back to their employer, and then he could lay the blame at the Velenese door. But would he really destroy the newly minted peace just for his own personal satisfaction?

  Of course he would. Drault would do anything for his own satisfaction.

  The irony was that the prince didn’t even realise this was part of what made him so hated.

  Everard cleared his throat. Flushing, Lyram resumed his dictation, noting the enemy numbers, their fit-out, the fortifications of the castle as he knew them, a conservative estimate of how long they might hold out, and an appeal for help.

  As Everard started on the second copy, Lyram’s mind drifted. Almost absently he picked up the flask from the desk and took a sip. The whisky seemed strangely sweet and didn’t burn like it should, but he took another swallow anyway. Everard was wrong. Lyram’s grief and resultant attack on the prince had given Drault the opening needed to have him dismissed from court, but it wasn’t the real reason. But how to prove it? He had no evidence, nothing beyond a longstanding antipathy between himself and the crown prince, one born of Lyram’s popularity and the fact his father stood next in line for the throne behind Drault... and the prince’s attitude to his Tembran wife. That, and Drault’s parting words.

  On that late summer day of his departure from the capital, rain sliced down out of a grey sky, soaking the cavalcade to the bone as they waited patiently to be off, sluicing from the armour of his guard and leaving pennants hanging raggedly. Thundering rain on cobbles muffled all sound more than a foot away, and Drault must’ve known his words would be inaudible to bystanders when he came.

  “The rumours have started,” he said. “That you killed your own wife. Inevitable, really, when the killer cannot be found to be brought to justice, and you yourself unaccounted for at the time.”